Grant: Discovery Grants Program - Individual

To meet Canada's commitments for net-zero emission by 2050, we need to reduce and eventually eliminate existing Diesel power generation systems in northern communities and remote industry sites. A lot of work has been done on power generation with renewable energy resources for grid-connected applications. There are still many unsolved issues for off-grid applications in the form of microgrids, as remote communities are not connected to existing power grids. One practical solution is to replace Diesel generators with Small Modular Reactors (SMRs) and use renewable energy resources as much as possible. There are multitudes of challenges: (1) renewable energy resources are non-dispatchable, and their availability is seasonal and weather-dependent, and (2) load-following capacities of SMRs are inferior to Diesel generators due to their operational safety regulations. These pose serious operational challenges for such microgrids. However, due to their inherent properties, thermal energy is a viable form of energy in SMRs. Thermal energy can be used not only for district heating but also for meeting industry needs, i.e. producing steam and hot water. Most importantly, it is also possible to use thermal energy storage systems, which are much more economical than batteries. As seen, a microgrid is a complex dynamic system composed of subsystems of different dynamics and operational constraints. To further complicate the situation, off-grid microgrids have much smaller inertia than grid-connected ones. Thus, they are more vulnerable to load disturbance and fluctuations in renewable energy resources. The proposed research is to investigate some fundamental issues in the above systems and to develop innovative control and energy management strategies by taking advantage of recent advances in machine-learning-based predictive energy forecasting technologies. The long-term vision of this research is to develop a flexible framework, real-time control, and energy management system to accommodate different types of clean energy resources to form reliable off-grid microgrids. A uniqueness of such a microgrid is that it contains Small Modular Reactors (SMRs). The short-term goals are: 1.Characterization of Different Clean Energy Systems 2.Determination of Dynamic Operating Envelopes and Control Ranges 3.Synthesis of Dynamic Approximate Models for Different Energy Resources 4.Objective Function Formulation and Optimization Schemes 5.Machine-learning-guided Optimization 6.Integration and Validation of Dynamic Control with Optimization Five HQPs will be trained on the project to meet Canada's human resources demand in this particular area. It is potentially possible to engage indigenous communities, as many indigenous communities are running on Diesel generators for their electricity generation. This research may provide an alternative clean solution.