With more and more renewable energy penetration, the future electric grid will have several advantages, like lower carbon emissions, distributed generation, improved flexibility of grid-handling, etc. However, this also brings many challenges, such as source intermittency, low-inertia grid, and system resiliency, which currently act as bottlenecks for resource integration.

This talk will introduce some of the latest trends and future directions of the electric grid, from a power conversion perspective. In addition, energy storage systems (ESSs) provide services such as peak power shaving, capacity smoothing, load shifting, etc., that are critical to maintaining the voltage and frequency of the grid, especially to enhance resiliency under high renewable energy penetration.

The talk will also cover the relevance of energy storage systems – such as batteries, hydrogen, etc. – in the future grid/microgrid and evaluate methods to design optimal ESSs. It will further discuss the transition from a high-inertia power grid to a low-inertia system involving grid-following and grid-forming converters.

Guest Speaker

Harish Krishnamoorthy

Associate Professor

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering

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