Each year, the Think Smartgrids association rewards young researchers with an award for the quality of their work and their contributions to smart grids and the energy transition from a sustainable development perspective.
The “smart grids” thesis prize was awarded on January 28th to four PhDs by the association’s Scientific Council, chaired by Nouredine Hadjsaid (GrenobleINP) and Pierre Mallet (Enedis). The winners had the opportunity to present their theses to industry professionals at the association’s awards ceremony, and won €2,000 for the women’s and men’s prizes, and €1,000 for the two “Special” prizes, funded by RTE, Enedis and EDF.
The prize in the women’s category, awarded to Audrey Moulichon (University of Grenoble-Alpes , G2Elab and Gipsa-lab), rewarded her work on the design of a “virtual synchronous generator (VSG)” system to stabilize electric microgrids that integrate a high proportion of renewable energy (RE). Her work proves that RE can participate in the balance of the power grid and microgrids without a rotating machine (and therefore without a thermal power plant), thanks to a grid-forming inverter control that is easily replicable and portable, in order to facilitate the industrialization of the solution. Two prototypes were developed by Schneider electric and the G2Elab of Grenoble INP, demonstrating the replicability of this solution under different conditions.
Simon Camal’s (Mines Paris Tech) thesis, which won the prize in the men’s prize, focused on the provision of ancillary services by renewable energy sources, i.e., power reserves that can be activated upwards or downwards to ensure the balance of the entire power grid. Currently, these ancillary services are provided by controllable energy production facilities, such as gas-fired power plants. Simon Camal has thus worked on a virtual power plant project that aggregates renewable energy production to enable RE to contribute to grid balancing. His research has also had a concrete application, with the European H2020 REstable project, which has successfully carried out tests with an aggregated production of 270 MW from renewable energy sources.
Finally, two prizes were awarded to Barnabé Potel (G2Elab) and Ferréol Binot (CentraleSupélec, GEEPS). The first has conducted work on the evolution of the under-frequency load shedding mechanism, with an in-depth reflection on the design and implementation of load-shedding, which aims to maintain the balance between production and consumption by temporarily disconnecting a load.
As for Ferréol Binot, he has developed a dual state and parameter estimator for low-voltage electrical distribution networks, with several possible applications: optimizing the management of network usage, accurately and rapidly identifying the position of incidents on the networks, and finally, being able to use the network as close as possible to its physical limits in order to limit the need to reinforce it by deploying new production capacities, which translates into significant savings for network operators.
Through its Scientific Advisory Board, Think Smartgrids continues to support and promote research for resilient and sustainable smart grids.