Karlsruhe Institute of Technology – Institute of Electric Energy Systems and High-Voltage Technology

Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) in Germany is a university in the state of Baden-Württemberg and a research center of the Helmholtz Association. It is one of the leading German institutions in the field of energy system engineering. KIT operates outstanding research infrastructure and coordinated research units while offering excellently ranked academic programs including all aspects of energy systems. The Institute of Electric Energy Systems and High-Voltage Technology (IEH) is working in the field of power engineering on grid components as well as on a system level in order to investigate innovative solutions to transform the energy supply system. Its activities range from HVDC system design aspects for transmission grid applications to provision of spinning reserve from wind power systems and battery storage applications in the distribution grid. In the context of multimodal energy grids, an increasing number of recent research activities at IEH focuses on the steady state modeling of gas grids as well as coupled gas and electricity grids. Research projects at IEH are carried out in modeling and simulation frameworks as well as testing the developed new concepts in test environments scaling from typical university labs to real world labs and in some cases even in the grid of distribution system operators. Consequently, there are a number of prototype installations of control systems in distribution grids developed by IEH and other KIT researchers.

The IEH has experience in designing control systems for power converters since almost 20 years. The first project started about 17 years ago with the design of a power electronics based high voltage source for onsite testing [1]. Another project implemented an active front end for battery charging stations while providing ancillary services to the grid [2]. Comprehensive work has been carried out in the field of converter modelling, especially modelling of MMC (Modular Multilevel Converters) and their interaction with the power grid [3]. In cooperation with partners from the university of Waterloo (Canada), a system for using battery storage systems for grid supporting was investigated [4]. Since 2017, the IEH is working in the field of using the spinning reserve of wind power stations as grid ancillary service by an appropriate control system. Currently, a test facility is being installed to demonstrate different control system approaches for utilizing the rotating mass of wind power stations for grid spinning reserve. This work is the basis for the proposed project. Using this laboratory set-up, control architectures can be pre-tested and subsequently implemented on an up-scaled version in a real-world system as proposed within this project. Research at IEH is done in modelling and simulation frameworks as well as in testing the developed new concepts in test environments scaling from typical university labs over real world labs up to the grid of distribution system operators. Consequently, there are a number of prototype installations of control systems in distribution grid developed by IEH and other KIT researchers.