Power Flow Routing
Junhao Lin, Victor O. K. Li, Ka-Cheong Leung, Albert Y. S. Lam
The University of Hong Kong
The increase in energy demand and the integration of renewable energy sources (RESs) are stressing the grid, prompting system operators to take active control measures for managing the power flow more efficiently and intelligently. Power flow routing, an emerging control paradigm for the flexible and responsive control of power flows, is a promising solution to cope with the challenges. Our research explores the benefits of power flow routing in improving the efficiency and flexibility of the power system and in helping increase the penetration of renewables, to achieve a smarter and greener grid.
We conduct a systematic study on the future power network, namely, the Energy Internet, featured by power flow routing. Our projects and vision include the following:
- We design a generic functional model of a power flow router (PFR), one of the building blocks of power flow routing. The PFR should be able to provide interfaces for various types of power injections and to achieve smart control of individual power flows. The proposed PFR model encapsulates the desired functions of PFRs, and amenable for implementation and theoretical study of power flow routing.
- We develop an optimal power flow (OPF) framework incorporated with PFRs for power flow analysis and grid optimisation. The proposed framework generalises the power injection control and power flow routing. It is extensible for various applications to evaluate the benefits of power flow routing, including the enhancement of power transfer capability, reductions of energy management costs, and improvement of system reliability and resilience.
- • We study the flow routing mechanism for real-time power balancing and stability control. The networking behaviours of multiple PFRs are analysed to guide the design of the coordination schemes of the network components, such as routing devices, energy storage, and distributed energy resources (DERs). Based on the design philosophy, distributed routing algorithms will be further developed for real-time network control.
