Grant: Discovery Grants Program - Individual

Canada is a large country with metropolitan cities and numerous remote communities. Renewable resources based microgrids can be a cost-effective solution to increase the electricity generation and help the current utilities to meet the increased demand due to population growth in metropolitan cities and reduce the reliance on fossil fuel sources in remote communities. Furthermore, clustered microgrids can reduce the stress on the main utility and increase reliability and resilience at reduced costs. Clustered microgrids can provide financial benefits through generating and exchanging low-cost electricity and offer energy solutions for smart communities and cities. A microgrid is a small-scale electric network that includes several connected distributed energy resources to meet the load demand for different end-users such as residential, industries, businesses, and communities. It can operate as a standalone system, with storage capabilities, and/or connected to the main utility grid. Furthermore, it includes hardware and software platforms for the energy conversion, distribution, and monitoring. Microgrids can have the capability to communicate between each other, in a clustered mode, and with the main utility grid to exchange the energy for more electric reliability and resilience. The efficient operation of clustered microgrids requires optimization, management, and supervision due to the intermittence of the renewable resources, the unbalanced load distribution in communities and cities and the unbalance between the individual microgrids supply and the demand. These topics will be investigated in this proposed research.   Different economic, environmental and health objectives will be assessed in the optimization using advanced tools based on modelling and artificial intelligence.   This research will be committed to finding innovative, cost-effective solutions to enhance the operation and usage of microgrids in a clustered manner to provide efficient energy solutions for smart communities and cities. It will contribute to the research community aiming to find new ways to generate and distribute the electric energy and move away from the conventional centralized main grid. At the laboratory facility at Saint Mary's University, different platforms will be used for simulation, design, monitoring, control, and optimizing of microgrids. Large scale microgrids will be investigated in collaboration with research laboratories from national and international universities, local and national industries. This research will provide an excellent environment for the training of Highly Qualified Personnel (HQP) at undergraduate and graduate levels in different engineering fields such as power electronics, control, electric drives, power systems and computer software. The proposed research will bring contributions to scientific knowledge, solutions for industry and success for HQP training in a wide range of fields involving multidisciplinary engineering.