Newcastle University in the UK and Siemens Energy Automation Division have launched a state-of-the-art laboratory-scale smart grid test bed.
The £2 million laboratory is the first of its kind in the world and will enable developers to test the robustness of existing grid technologies as well as trial new ones. Experts will be able to simulate major events such as power cuts as well as day-to-day changes in the grid in real time without any risk to consumers.
The aim of the test bed is to gain a better understanding of the demands placed on the electricity network as well as how the network will cope with increasing electricity demand. "This new lab will allow us to push the system to these limits without putting the network and customers' supply at risk," said Dr Padraig Lyons, Senior Smart Grids Researcher at Newcastle University.
Dr Lyons added: "Computer models are good to a point, but they lack the realism to mimic constantly changing energy flows across the grid and state-of-the-art intelligent network control systems. With this new technology we are virtually linked up to the grid so the second by second fluctuations across the real network are also happening in real-time in our lab.
"We will be able to test a really tough day in a future scenario and then run it again and again under different conditions and with different energy demands to understand how the existing grid and a future intelligent grid would react and how we can overcome any problems before they happen in the real world."
The lab at the University's campus is part of a larger smart grid project which includes a grid-scale energy storage test bed being developed on Science Central a major regeneration project being led by Newcastle University and Newcastle City Council and a centre of excellence on urban innovation and sustainability.
Experts from the University, in collaboration with Siemens and Northern Powergrid, will be trialling new technologies for energy storage to efficiently and sustainably manage delivery of energy across the UK electricity grid.
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