TDHVL member gets successful in competitive international collaboration bid

Stratis Batzelis, member of TDHVL and lecturer with ECS, secured one out of 25 Early career researcher international collaboration grants  available from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC). He was awarded £160,000 to develop his research into improving the stability of renewable energy-powered networks.

Decarbonising our electric network involves massive deployment of energy resources with power electronics as grid interface, such as wind, solar and electric vehicles, but “these resources are not always behaving nicely during disturbances in the electric grid”, said Stratis. This collaboration with the National Technical University of Athens and industry partners National Grid ESO and SMPnet seeks to create a control framework for these resources with a mixed voltage/current response that is self-adapting to the grid conditions. This could, said Stratis, “serve as a universal solution that will unlock the true potential of these resources and enable high renewable integration required for achieving our net zero targets.”

The university has been very successful overall in this call, securing 3 out of 25 awards nationally. “We submitted 14 applications from the University, of which three were awarded - a success rate of over 21%,” said Raquel Meco-Melguizo, Research Funding Manager in RIS, who supported researchers with their applications.