Kalhan's Blog

This webinar series is created by the Smart Grid Research Lab of the University of Moratuwa , Sri Lanka. As a research assistant and a Ph.D. student, I had the honor of organizing the series.  The webinar series is titled "Discussion forum on Smart Grid and Microgrids". It will cover the fundamentals of Smart Grid and Microgrids and the research areas of Smart Grid Research Lab. The webinars will be uploaded to YouTube and created as a playlist . Check out the introduction to the webinar series and the lab by Prof. K. T. M. U. Hemapala.

The microgrid is a concept that is modernizing the conventional power system in many countries. It was first proposed in the early 2000s and a lot of research from academia and industry has been conducted to improve the concept as well as the technologies required. Here the definitions of the microgrid are given. USA Department of Energy (DOE) definition (Ton & Smith, 2012): "A group of interconnected loads and distributed energy resources within clearly defined electrical boundaries that acts as a single controllable entity with respect to the grid. A microgrid can connect and disconnect from the grid to enable it to operate in both grid-connected or island mode." European Union (EU) Research Projects definition (Schwaegerl & Tao, 2013): "Microgrids comprise LV distribution systems with distributed energy resources (DER) (microturbines, fuel cells, PV, etc.) together with storage devices (flywheels, energy capacitors, and batteries) and flexible loads. Such syst...

Smart grids and microgrids are the future of the power system we use today. Integrating the power systems with communication devices and adding a data layer has its perks for power system operators as well as the consumers.  This novel power system will generate enormous amounts of data with its maturity. As researchers, it is quite fascinating for us since this means that we get to combine two disciplines, Machine Learning & Power Systems. In this blog post, I will list all the possible applications that I come across of machine learning in power systems. Update: I will start to categorize them into, Microgrid research Energy forecasting Smart grid research Microgrid research Multi-agent systems for microgrid control [ link ] Reinforcement learning for microgrid energy management Detect security breaches Fault detection and classification Microgrid islanding detection Multi-agent reinforcement learning for microgrid control Energy forecasting research Solar energy forecasting ...

The picture was taken from Pixabay.com - I think I'm trying to say that I finally started it. One of the research areas that I'm very fascinated with is Microgrid research. there are several reasons for this long fascination. I heard about them in my final year group project in uni (UoM, Sri Lanka) and who can forget their FYP? (However, I was a lazy undergraduate and didn't do much about it) They appear to solve many problems in the modern electric grid with high penetration of renewable energy sources. Their islanded operation can provide electricity even in grid outages, which is both fascinating and helpful to critical loads. (eg. Hospitals, Water supply,..) (Keep in mind that above is not the full potential of microgrids and I will compile a post on the full potential of microgrids in the future) I'm currently working on microgrid research in UoM. The current research is "Design and development of a new Reconfigurable Architecture for Solar Ph...