Status: Running (March 2019 – 2021)

Role: Chief co-Investigator

Funded by: AusNet Services, Australia and ARENA (Australian Renewable Energy Agency)

Project description: The industrial project "Advanced Planning of PV-Rich Distribution Networks" has been established in collaboration with AusNet Services and Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) to produce innovative analytical techniques to assess network hosting capacity of solar PV using readily available network and customer data (e.g., smart meter) as well as planning recommendations to increase hosting capacity using non-traditional solutions (i.e., smart PV inverters, battery energy storage). Crucially, this project will help DNOs to quickly estimate hosting capacity without the need of complex and detailed network studies or the adoption of generic assumptions, to make more informed investment decisions, and, ultimately, to facilitate the widespread adoption of small-to-medium scale solar PV systems. 

Status: Running (June 2018 – 2020)

Role: Chief co-Investigator

Funded by: Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), USA

Project description: The industrial project "Assessment of Integration Solution Methods for Increasing PV Hosting Capacity" has been established in collaboration with Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI, USA) to help EPRI develop advanced distribution planning tools that can assess the performance of different PV-based integration solutions. The project will help distribution network operators to quickly determine the most cost-effective, integration solutions for high penetrations of medium-scale PV systems across large network areas and, hence, increase the corresponding hosting capacity. 

Status: Completed (February 2018 – June 2018)

Role: Chief co-Investigator

Funded by: AusNet Services, Australia

Project description: The “Solar PV Penetration and HV-LV Network Impacts” project, in collaboration with AusNet Services, had been established in order to investigate the relationship between the increase in residential solar PV penetration and the resulting technical impacts (i.e., voltage and asset congestion) in distribution networks. This project produced key insights on the requirements for detailed HV and LV network studies and findings will be used by AusNet Services to draw planning recommendations in the context of widespread solar PV. 

Status: Completed (Sep 2013 – Sep 2016)

Role: Co-manager

Funded by: Électricité de France (EDF) and Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) 

Funding:  €125,314

Project description: The "Active Management of Low Voltage Networks", in collaboration with Électricité de France R&D (i.e., the largest R&D centre in Europe), was established to investigate the effect of adopting active management techniques to increase the ability of Low Voltage networks to accommodate higher number of low carbon technologies, in particular, residential-scale PV systems and EVs. The project was divided into three main tasks: (1) the coordinated control of residential-scale LCTs (i.e., PV systems, EVs), (2) the control of residential-scale BES systems and (3) the utilisation of LV OLTC-fitted transformers to control voltages and congestion in LV networks.