Resilient & Intelligent Energy Systems | Energy transition and innovation

Our digitalized electricity system rapidly becomes a complex system of millions of connected devices that depend on communication to safeguard the supply of energy. The current infrastructure, both physical assets and the IT infrastructure, was never designed for this transition. Furthermore, the up-coming and already on-going bottom-up movements of prosumers and energy communities require new forms of governance, incentives, and market designs to foster an inclusive energy system.

The Resilient & Intelligent Energy Systems (RIES) programme performs research that enables a resilient, self-organising, and inclusive energy system that meets the demands of its producers, prosumers, and consumers.

Distributed, user-based and smart

According to the Dutch integral national energy- and climate plan 2021-2030, new technology development and implementation projects are required to move away from the current, traditional electricity grid to a distributed, user-based and smart grid that can handle the new reality. At the same time, societal aspects around the implementation and use of these new technologies need to be considered. New solutions and innovations are needed to facilitate distributed electricity generation, ensure system reliability, safeguard the security of energy supply, and to handle conversion to and from other energy carriers and -infrastructure.

The RIES programme focusses on four challenges:

Distributed energy management: Design of distributed algorithms to efficiently exploit energy flexibility and control assets in highly dynamic distribution grids. This with the aim to allow for a safe integration of renewable energy and new assets like e.g. heat pumps, EVs and electrolysers in capacity constrained grids.
Safety and security: Safeguarding the supply of energy through the development of physics informed cyber-security methods that utilize the advantages offered by cyber-physical system models and digital twins.
System integration: Study and analysis of the effects of interactions in multi-energy systems by utilizing multi-physics dynamic modelling as well as the integration of many and diverse devices into a single complex power system with respect to (self-)organization, communication, stability (power electronics), market design, and resilience.
Societal acceptance, governance, and innovation: Studies behavioural, social, organisational and institutional aspects as well as business and governance models regarding experimenting and scaling of RIES.