Think Smartgrids 2022 Thesis Award, Women's category

Each year, the Think Smartgrids Scientific Council rewards the most outstanding theses on smart grids. At its annual ceremony on 13 January, Think Smartgrids awarded the Smart Grids Thesis Prize to four young researchers.

Lalitha Subramanian awarded !

Think Smartgrids, created in April 2015, aims to develop the Smart Grids (REI) sector in France and to promote it in Europe and internationally.

Each year, the Think Smartgrids Scientific Council rewards the most outstanding theses on smart electricity networks. During its annual ceremony on 13 January, Think Smartgrids awarded the Smart Grids Thesis Prize to four young researchers.

Lalitha Subramanian, awarded the Women's Smart Grids Thesis Prize, studied the improvement of frequency stability in electricity grids with a high penetration of intermittent renewable energies (RE), a major challenge for the energy transition. It proposed a solution based on so-called "synthetic" or "virtual" inertia combined with a hybrid storage system, in order to replace the rotating machines of conventional electricity networks. In particular, she focused on 100% RE-fuelled microgrids in Southeast Asia. Her thesis, entitled "Stability enhancement of inverter dominated Power Systems using virtual inertia control", was jointly supervised by Professor Nouredine Hadjsaid of Grenoble INP - UGA and Professor Hoay Beng GOOI of Nanyang Technological University Singapore. This research was carried out at G2Elab in collaboration with Nanyang Technological University (NTU) Singapore in the framework of the CNRS IRN SINERGIE.

The thesis starts from the observation that the power system is traditionally powered by synchronous rotating machines which intrinsically contribute to the resilience of the system by providing rotary inertia. With the progressive replacement of synchronous machines by decentralised and intermittent renewable energy generation, the inherent inertia of the system is reduced. Synthetic inertia must therefore be used to improve the resilience of a system with lower inertia. The thesis explores several issues, such as the adequate capacity in terms of synthetic inertia, flexibility and frequency reactivity, via converters, to stabilise a power system tending towards 100% renewable. The effectiveness of the proposed control strategies has been validated by so-called "amplifier-in-the-loop" numerical simulations (real-time simulator with amplifier).

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