Decision support tools for grid operators

High voltage direct current transmission technology is playing a key role in the integration of renewable resources into the European power system as well as for bulk power transport which will be needed for industrial decarbonization and the therewith associated demand growth. Such a bulk electricity transmission grid needs to be designed in a resilient way for secure supply of electricity.

This PhD will investigate how different types of energy carriers can improve the resilience of the HVDC grid, in particular by providing energy storage capability. To that end, new resilience indicators need to be defined first, which allow to assess the resilience of different multi-energy system designs. Secondly, stochastic optimization models for the operation of such a multi-energy system need to be formulated, which allow the calculation of the defined resilience indicators under a variety of operating conditions. Using the developed operational models, a variety of different network topologies will be assessed in terms of resilience and a set of planning guidelines will be defined to assist grid planners in the future.