Faglige nøgleord: Energy, renewable energy, optimization, python, solar PV, wind turbines, wind farms, electricity, power systems, hybrid power plants, electrical storage, green energy, renewables, wind, solar energy
Oplæg tilgængeligt på: Engelsk, kroatisk, serbisk, bosnisk
Renewable energy - we want more of it and as soon as possible.
Why? Climate change effects need to be slowed down, pollution from conventional power plants needs to be reduced, and we have only limited natural resources that are used in conventional power plants (e.g. oil, coal, gas etc.)
Is that all? Well, not really...
What are the problems? Renewables require a lot of space, are often available to produce electricity when the need for energy is not as high, and are hard to rely on.
How to resolve these? Hybrid power plants (HPPs) - solutions that can bring even higher value to society.
We place different technologies (wind and solar PV) in the same location (thus, we reduce total needed space); we combine technologies whose resources are available at different times during the day (thus, creating a flatter production curve), and we bring storage to the picture (and tackle uncertainty with it).
Well, is that all now? No, not really...
HPPs are huge projects and to persuade relevant people to invest in it, we need to come up with the methods that will explicitly show the cost reductions and benefits this concept gives. We need to provide them with the framework that will bring case-specific solutions that reduce the costs, usage of materials and needed space. We need to do the optimization of the resources given - to say we should place wind turbines in this location like this, put PV panels here and here, connect those technologies with these cables in this way - and voila - we have the project that can bring us closer to the vision of having completely green energy mix - a cleaner environment, with livable climate conditions and more space for other stuff.
Is it that easy? No, not really...
The problems I described above are extremely hard to solve (and be sure we got the best solution). It gets even harder if we have in mind the physical interactions between wind turbines and PV panels - how does the shadow of the wind turbine affect the PV panel; how close we are allowed to put wind turbines next to each other so that they do not affect each other significantly; what about shading effect between PV panels, and so on...
Creating the optimization problem and solving it is what is the main goal of my research. With students, we can also focus on the basics of mathematical optimization, and how that can be applied basically anywhere and created for anything. Specifically in this case - on the physical design of collocated renewable technologies.
I have some simple examples created in Python (programming language very popular and almost a prerequisite for any technology curriculum nowadays) that deal with the optimization in wind energy.
The story of my research journey might be interesting for those specifically interested in going for the renewable energy industry - very big in Denmark, and research in wind energy - absolutely the best in the world is in Denmark (DTU Wind). I have some experience working as a project developer for wind and solar PV projects, and now, as a (quite young) PhD student at DTU Wind. Experiencing both sides of the work (research and industry), we can have a chat on the comparison between both, and how hard can deciding on the career path be - but, comforting how it always ends well. Also, as a female PhD student in energy engineering, it might be motivating for female students to go to the research field in this mostly men-dominated area (you can check the video we had at our department, I was also involved in: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7162725644869611522/).