DCNEXTEVE project

1. Presenter: dr. Irina Ciornei (UPB - MicroDERLab)
15/06/2017
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Status quo!
At the time of application I was a PhD holder for few years already.
I had good experience with European Funded projects from
proposals’ writing to actual implementation and reporting (team
member - though).
I briefly knew my current supervisor through a common Cy-Ro
bilateral program.
She encouraged me to apply together for a MSCA fellowship.

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Looking for more info:
• Web -> Participant portal -> Horizon2020 Helpdesk -> Annotated Model
Grant Agreement.
• Participation to Info Days in Cyprus for H2020 Calls including MSCA.
• Ask briefings and help from the NCP in Cyprus responsible with MSCA
Pierantonios helped a lot and he was very responsive whenever needed.
• I had few former colleagues at KIOS who successfully applied and were
awarded a – MSCA – IF or COFUND.

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Proposal Writing:
• Joint-effort with the supervisor – it really makes the difference
(complement each other like the new team is already there)!
Source: “Survivor’s Guide to Marie-Sklodowska Curie Actions, Individual
Fellowships (IF) Call H2020-MSCA-IF-2016”, European Commission
KISS = keep it simple
and short!!!

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Prof. Albu, the supervisor, is the director of
MicroDERLab, a Research Group at UPB
• Faculty of Electrical Engineering
• Faculty of Automation and Control
• Faculty of Power Engineering
Expertise of supervisor and the group:
• Measurement technology for emerging Power Quality
concepts in dynamic power system conditions;
• Instrumentation for power systems; synchronized
measurements;
• Grid integration of renewable energy sources; active
distribution grids
• State estimation and WAMCS
• Microgrids (including DC and hybrid architectures)
• Modeling the power system components for steady-state
and dynamic simulation;
• Voltage and frequency control in power systems

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My area of expertise
Background in Power systems’ operation
>10 years experience in applying Operation Research Methods
Planning, Scheduling & Operation optimization for systems under
uncertainty (including resiliency metrics to encounter for critical
infrastructures interactions); electricity market models and their
possible impact on projects of common interests.
> 10 EU-Funded Projects (from proposal to implementation
–!!! team member

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What the project shall be about???
The proposal was coined such that to expand my area of expertise while
building on my previous knowledge!
Secondment AAU/ET – MG Research Group
prof. Josep Guerrero!
Design and operation of LVDC microgrids with a focus on clusters located on a small
territory and seeking long term resiliency against regulatory changing environments

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Excellence
Impact
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Impact
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Impact
n
Implementation plan

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• Career development plan to be signed at the beginning of the project,
together with the Supervisor
• Revise it every 12 months to see if you’re on track…
• Project and time management are very, very important… you’re more
independent now and take more responsibility for the whole project
• (Principal investigator)
Useful tools I am using:
• ProjectLibre
• OneNote
• EndNote, etc
And now… the actual journey starts!

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Continuous Promotion/Communication of the project:
besides classical research publications…
Website (as of 11/05/2017: 11709 visitors and Hits: 33216)
www.dcnexteve.microderlab.pub.ro
www.dcnexteve.et.aau.dk
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Github (open source generated code)
https://github.com/openenergyprojects
ResearchGate (open access repository):
www.researchgate.net/project/DCNextEve
Linkedin (industry and more)
Twitter account for the project
Newspaper Articles (UPB & KIOS),
The journey goes on….

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Career boosting …..
➢ KT within the Group of MicroDERLab and above
▪ collaboration for publications
▪ synergies with other projects
➢ online courses for Intro in Power Electronics
➢ KT within the Hosting Group for Secondment (AAU/ET-MG)
▪ Free course on DCMGs
▪ Free course on Optimization with applications to MGs
➢ Lectures for Master and Undergrad Students on SGs and
MME @UPB
The journey goes on….

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UPB has its own particularity when it comes to administrative work
related to each EU funded project!
• Very bureaucratic
• many people are willing to help but there are a lot of slow motion decision chains: e.g.
no official work-access card after ~ one year of employment (I am not an exception)
• one has to handle a lot of admin work starting with hiring admin personnel (from UPB-
employees) and allocate work-hours etc.
• Advantage: more control in unit-cost cash flows
• Disadvantage: for small projects like a MSCA-IF it actually means a lot of admin
work that PI needs to do extra of his/her research time
• All travels needs special approval from the Rector and it might take from 2 weeks to a
month or more to get it. After this, the flight tickets go into an acquisition system that
has only 4 travel agencies agreed by UPB for the auction. Due to all these steps, many
times the tickets end up to be prohibitively-expensive.
• A solution would be to allow direct bookings and payments and reimburse them
together with all other travel associated expenses.
The journey: learning stops….

13. Research Background
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 LVDC MGs is a emerging research topic. Most of the recent
literature in this field is focused on:
 possible architectures (most common explored in tests is single bus,
while less explored are ring & meshed architectures)
 Control and stability analysis of parallel connected DC/DC converters
 Energy management & power flow (little)
 Comparison of DC vs AC MGs with respect to efficiency
 Evaluation of the actual economic drivers that could move
industry towards a large scale adoption of DCMGs is on
incipient grounds
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The journey goes on….

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SPECIFICATIONS & ARCHITECTURES
• Design and modelling requirements for low voltage direct current microgrids
(LVDCMGs)
• Decision on possible connection architectures for neighborhood LVDC MGs
POWER QUALITY IN DC
• Key performance
indicators compatible
with control and PQ
requirements
• Optimal selection of
power converters for
optimal power transfer
OPERATION OF DCMG
UNDER UNCERTAINTY
• Steady-state optimal
scheduling of
resources
• Development of
dynamic optimization
models
APPLICATIONOFTHEOPERATIONANDCONTROL
SCHEMES
•Specificationofrealtestsystems
•Evaluationofoperationandcontrolschemesin
simulation-basedandrealtestsystems
CONTROL
• Design of local
controllers
• Design of adaptive
control schemes for
clusters of LVDCMGs
Implementation Plan on the Research Activities
The journey goes on….

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• Targeted end-users for the project research outcome
LV power supplied small residential or/& office buildings with local RES generation
already installed.
The journey goes on….
Design requirements:
• Minimum design and financial burden
• Make use of existing technology from both
AC legacy systems and DC native systems

16. Power Quality in DCMGs – published results
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Why?
To investigate if the most probable loads to be directly supplied in DC by the
LVDCMG are similarly sensitive to PQ phenomena defined for AC systems
• Extensive measurement tests to derivate actual models for the loads to be directly
supplied in DC.
• Accurate models could provide a better understanding of the behavior of the DC
microgrid under abnormal conditions.
• Our approach was to derive the specific models that best fit the steady-state
operation characteristic of each type of load (e.g. in an office building).
Published in: [I. Ciornei, A. F. Martinez-Palomino, M. Albu, M. Sanduleac, “Power flow formulation for LVDC
microgrids with nonlinear load models”, ICDCM, Nurmberg, Germany, 27-29 June 2017]

17. Power Quality in DCMGs – published results
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Key performance indicators compatible with control and PQ requirements –
following the most recent IEC 61000- 4-30 Standard
Published in: [I. Ciornei, L. Hadjidemetriou, M. Albu, M. Sanduleac, E.Kyriakides, “Analytical derivation of PQ
indicators compatible with control strategies for DC microgrids,” IEEE PowerTech, Manchester, UK, 18-22 June 2017]
• Follow standardized approach similar to the RCV for non-sinusoidal waveforms.
• Definition of new indicators in time and frequency domain and evaluate them against a
‘perfect signal’.
• Validate the definitions with lab experiments taking signals from actual/industry available
devices.

18. MGs for SmartCities – published results
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Researchers are facing difficulties in testing and validating their methods as well as
comparing their results when real data about the systems they are studying are not
available. Modeling and visualizing interdependences between critical
infrastructures within a virtual, realistic city can provide insights on possible resilient
architectures. MGs are critical components of such resilient architectures.
PDN - MGs
CN
WDN
Published in: [I. Ciornei, C. Heracleous, et. al., “Test system for mapping interdependencies of critical infrastructures for intelligent
management in smart cities,” Book Chapter in Smart Cities in the Mediterranean, Springer Book Series, 2017, Ed. A. Stratigea, et al,
ISBN 978-3-319-54558-5]

19. What’s next?
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 Refine and implement the remaining tasks…
 Journal Publications on pending….
 Collaboration and synergies with another H2020 project that just
started at MicroDERLab: Storage4Grid
 Strengthen collaboration with AAU/ET – MG and open a path for
other colleagues @ MicroDERLab
 Organize round table with industry (IRE – winter 2017)
 Organize one workshop for the project (EnergyCon2018)
 Video lectures

20. Acknowledgements:
AAU/ET – MG Research Group, for
Secondment and for Free Training Course on
Control of DC MGs
“This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020
research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant
agreement No 708844”.
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