Grant: Discovery Grants Program - Individual

The Canadian transportation sector is relying heavily on oil and it accounts for almost 30% of the total carbon emissions. The concerns regarding the global warming, the rising gas prices, as well as Canada's goal to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050, are drivers for adopting the electrification of the transportation sector (ETS), which involves three modes: 1) land-based vehicles, 2) aircraft and 3) seagoing vessels. Despite many benefits of such an electrification, the adverse impacts of integrating this sector with the existing highly stressed grid infrastructure needs better management of the distribution system resources (DSRs) to avoid peak demand, power outages, poor power quality (PQ) and asset failure. To date, little research has focused on managing the operation of the existing DSRs to mitigate the aforementioned forms of impacts considering both the residential and the commercial sectors altogether. The focus of the previous successful applications was to address the problems of integrating plugin electric vehicles (PEVs) into each sector separately. The research in this application focuses on extending the analysis to incorporate the integration of ultrafast charging infrastructure (UFCI), which will allow addressing the combined effect of charging PEV/e-buses/e-trucks in both sectors on the grid, in a holistic manner, instead of studying the effect of each individually. Hence, this proposal aims to conduct a series of investigations to manage the impacts resulting from the operation of the UFCI as well as those resulting from the cyberattacks targeting such critical charging infrastructure; in particular, the peak demand, the undesirable voltage variations/outages, unbalances, sub-/supra-harmonic distortions and assets degradation. Improved models of UFCI will be examined and the advanced time-frequency signal processing tools such as the third-generation wavelets will be used to analyze modern PQ disturbances during both normal and cyberattacks. Also, this research will develop new computationally intelligent algorithms to optimize the operation of DSRs, battery energy storage, novel flexible renewable distributed generation and microgrids to mitigate the impacts of integrating UFCI, which will eventually lead to the transformation of the existing system into a smart distribution system. These investigations will lead to improved reliability/efficiency/PQ, as well as tolerability to cybersecurity risk in addition to reducing the stress on the aging assets leading to deferral of premature replacement. Furthermore, the successful management of a holistic integration of UFCI will pave the way towards smooth transition in integrating the other modes of ETS, hence reducing the carbon footprint. The proposed research program will provide exceptional opportunities for graduate students to bridge the gap between theory and practice in smart grid-related areas, hence addressing the shortage in trained graduates and expertise in this field.