The Melbourne Energy Institute invites you to the sixth MEInetwork seminar for 2024, presented by Professor Pierluigi Mancarella, MEI’s Energy Systems Program Leader, Chair Professor of Electrical Power Systems at the University of Melbourne, and Professor of Smart Energy Systems at the University of Manchester, UK.
MEInewtork24 Seminar #6 - Enabling the DER revolution - from dynamic pricing to virtual power plants, energy communities, and microgrids
Making the demand side more active and flexible is considered the Holy Grail to enable integration of renewable energy into power systems and markets and whole-system decarbonisation. In this regard, Distributed Energy Resources (DERs) embedded in distribution networks are becoming widespread in most countries worldwide. In Australia, in particular, household-level consumer energy resources (CERs) such as rooftop solar photovoltaics, battery energy storage systems, electric heat pumps, and soon electric vehicles too, are poised to play an essential role towards net-zero targets and more consumer-centric system developments. Local energy systems with shared assets such as community storage are also emerging as important options of interest. Key ongoing debates now refer to how different distributed technologies and schemes should be fully integrated into power and energy systems and markets.
In this lecture we will present fundamental techno-economic aspects of key approaches that could enable large-scale deployment of DERs and CERs – from dynamic pricing to virtual power plants, energy communities, and microgrids – and discuss the benefits of demand side integration into systems and markets. Several case studies from recent projects in Australia and internationally will be used to exemplify the concepts presented.
Presenters
Professor Pierluigi Mancarella
Chair of Electrical Power Systems, Electrical and Electronic Engineering
Pierluigi Mancarella is Chair Professor of Electrical Power Systems at the University of Melbourne, Australia, and Professor of Smart Energy Systems at the University of Manchester, UK. He obtained the PhD degree in Power Systems from the Politecnico di Torino, Italy, did his post-doc at Imperial College London, UK, and has held visiting research positions at Sintef/NTNU in Norway and NREL in Colorado, as well as visiting professorships at Ecole Centrale de Lille in France, the Universidad de Chile, and Tsinghua University in China.
