Control and Monitoring of Power-Electronics-Dominated Energy Systems

Driven by environmental, societal and political goals, the worldwide use of renewable energies has increased significantly in recent years. This considerable growth of renewable energy sources not only changes the mix of our energy generation, but also strongly affects the energy system structure and its operation as a whole. This means that energy systems worldwide are currently experiencing drastic changes and challenges.

With our research, we seek to contribute to facilitating a swift, efficient and reliable transition towards climate-neutral energy systems. We do this by employing control engineering methods to develop new algorithms and tools to model, simulate, analyze and control climate-neutral energy systems with rigorous performance guarantees. Besides its strong practical relevance, control systems research in energy systems is also fascinating from a more theoretical perspective, since energy systems exhibit highly complex dynamics and as such offer fruitful grounds for new control-theoretic problem statements and developments. To tap into these, we work closely together with partners from control as well as power and energy systems, both from academia and industry. In particular, we work in close collaboration with the Business Area Control, Automation & Operation Management of the Fraunhofer Research Institution for Energy Infrastructures and Geothermal Systems (IEG).

Current topics of interest include:

  • Modeling, stability and control of microgrids and active distribution networks
  • Cooperative and grid-aware control of grid-connected renewable energy sources
  • Modeling and optimal control of multi-energy systems
  • Dynamic state and parameter estimation in power systems
  • Phase-locked-loop algorithms and frequency estimation

People

Cooperations

Funding

Selected publications

I. Jaramillo Cajica and J. Schiffer 
"A Dwell-Time Approach for Grid-Aware Operation of a Distributed Generator in an Islanded DC Microgrid", European Control Conference (ECC), pp. 1079-1084, London, UK, 2022
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H. Bai, H. Zhang, H. Cai, J.Schiffer, "Voltage Regulation and Current Sharing for Multi-Bus DC Microgrids: A Compromised Design Approach", Automatica, 142, Art. no. 110340, 2022
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A. Krishna, and J. Schiffer, "A Port-Hamiltonian Approach to Modeling and Control of an Electro-Thermal Microgrid", 7th IFAC Workshop on Lagrangian and Hamiltonian Methods for Nonlinear Control (LHMNC), Berlin, Germany, 54 (19), pp. 287-293, 2021
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 A. Bobtsov, R. Ortega, N. Nikolaev, N. Lorenz-Meyer, and J. Schiffer, "State Observation of Power Systems Equipped with Phasor Measurement Units: The Case of Fourth Order Flux-Decay Model"
IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control, 67 (4), pp. 2123-2130, 2021
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N. Lorenz-Meyer, A. A. Bobtsov, R. Ortega, N. Nikolaev, and J. Schiffer, "PMU-Based Decentralized Mixed Algebraic and Dynamic State Observation in Multi-Machine Power Systems", IET Generation, Transmission & Distribution, 14 (25), pp. 6267-6275, 2020
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S. Alghamdi, U. Markovic, O. Stanojev, J. Schiffer, G. Hug, and P. Aristidou, "Wide-Area Oscillation Damping in Low-Inertia Grids under Time-Varying Communication Delays" Electric Power Systems Research, 189, Art. No. 106629, 2020
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J. G. Rueda-Escobedo, S. Tang, and J. Schiffer, "A Performance Comparison of PLL Algorithms in Low-Inertia Power Systems Using an Observer-Based Framework", 21st IFAC World Congress, Berlin, Germany, 53 (2), pp. 12244-12250, 2020
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