Store-And-Forward Energy Grid

Introduction

Electrical power systems are experiencing significant challenges because of the substitution of fossil-based power plants with inverter-based renewable energy sources. This transition pushes power systems to the limits; first severe blackouts have already emerged in developed countries.

Challenges of Current Systems

Although applied for more than 100 years, the rigid coupling of the entire power system infrastructure to a global synchronous 50Hz-frequency is now turning into a liability, making a fundamental paradigm shift inevitable.

Project Goals

The ambitious goal of our project is the exploration, conceptualization, and evaluation of a radically new theory, architecture, and operational principle for power systems.

Innovative Approach

The groundbreaking idea is to go beyond the synchronous balance of power and to replace it with an asynchronous balance of energy, leveraging the established role models from the Internet and telecommunications domain.

Key Innovations

• The elimination of the global synchronicity requirement in power systems represents a quantum leap.
• This is realized through the decoupling and asynchronous operation of independent subgrids.
• Our fully intrinsic, scalable, and gradually deployable approach is based on the store-and-forward balancing of energy.

Enabling Technologies

Networked control, the evolution of power electronics, and the availability of energy storage are the enabling technologies for this revolutionary approach.

Impact of SAFEr Grid

SAFEr Grid will enable a fundamental breakthrough in the stable, resilient, efficient, scalable, and fully automated delivery of energy. It will stimulate widespread innovation in the energy sector—comparable to the rise of the Internet economy.

Project Risks and Expertise

The project is clearly a high-risk/high-gain endeavor that requires the expertise of multiple research disciplines. The four PIs constitute a perfect team, and the synergy of their expertise will successfully address Europe's most pressing grand challenge in terms of sustainability goals: energy supply, energy infrastructure, and energy independence.