Grant: Collaborative Research and Development Grants

Power systems need new resources to provide ancillary services and to serve peak load in order to integrate variable renewable energy generation and to meet the steadily growing electricity demand. Traditionally these additional power system resources have been provided by central generation plants. However, environmental concerns and capital expenditure constraints often impose limitations to adding new large generation facilities. The research team at UNB has proposed an alternative and innovative concept of aggregated direct load control for ancillary services, which will have a profound influence to the operation of power system resources under the smart grid environment. The objectives of this CRD project are to develop innovative technologies of direct load control for creating alternative power system resources without negative impact to customers' end use, and to transfer advanced technologies to Canadian industry for commercialization. These R&D endeavours will contribute to a long term goal of transforming the operation of power systems from ""generation following consumption"" to ""partial consumption following optimized generation"", thus improving the overall efficient operation of power systems and integrating more renewable power generation. This CRD project was developed jointly by the research team and Siemens Canada. The project focuses on developing models, forecasting methods, and control strategies of aggregated loads for peak load reduction and ancillary services, and on investigating the impact of direct load control on power distribution networks. The developed technologies will be integrated into Siemens' Decentralized Energy Management System (DEMS) and Siemens' Demand Response Management System (DRMS) platforms. This project will provide joint training by university researchers and industry experts for 16 Ph.D. and M.Sc. students, and 5 post-doctoral fellows, providing industry and universities with highly qualified personnel with advanced knowledge, hands-on experience and engineering skills.