Project description
Training wind turbine designers in a burgeoning industry
The WinGrid project is concerned with training the next generation of researchers on wind generation design, in what is a rapidly growing and needed sector globally. Such projects rely on efficient turbine designs, and most importantly, on system and machinery stability – complex factors that impact application in several ways, including cost and integration with strict grid requirements. WinGrid includes academics, industrialists and consultants from several countries to train ESRs in both software and hardware, exposing them to current issues, projections of future ones, and industrial secondments to enrich their expertise. This will contribute to resolving the dearth of highly-skilled researchers in the sector and ensure that future challenges in an ever-growing industry will be met successfully.
Objective
The WinGrid (Wind farm - Grid interactions: exploration and development) consortium aims to train the next generation of researchers on future power system integration issues associated with large-scale deployment of wind generation, focussing on the modelling and control aspects of wind turbine design, and the system stability issues and supervisory structures required for robust implementation. The volume of wind installations is growing rapidly, giving rise to various concerns about future power system stability. More sophisticated modelling capability is required to fully assess the growing complexity as we advance towards a 100% RES resilient power system, while new wind generation technologies are emerging which may radically impact how the future system evolves, against a background of more stringent grid code requirements and emerging system service markets. Highly-skilled researchers, capable of solving such problems, are scarce and in high demand by industry. WinGrid comprises an expert group of 10 academics from 8 beneficiary organisations including 7 leading universities and one large company DNV GL across 6 countries. It also has 8 internationally renowned industrial partners (e.g. ABB) ranging from wind turbine developer, transmission system operator, power system analysts and renewable energy consultants from 6 countries. Combined together we provide wide-ranging expertise in power electronics converters, control theory, system stability analysis, power system operation and electricity markets. The ESRs will enjoy a highly integrated, multi-disciplinary training environment, including access to specialist software and hardware-in-the-loop test environments, enriched through secondments with the network of industrial partners. WinGrid will enable critical learning across all training aspects, in order to ensure that comprehensive, robust and implementable solutions are obtained and validated to face the grid integration challenges of the future.
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Coordinator
CV4 8UW COVENTRY
United Kingdom