Imperial College London is heading up UK efforts of what is a global drive to create 100% renewable energy power grids across the world.
Through the Electric Power Innovation for a Carbon-free Society (EPICS) centre, which is based at John Hopkins University in the USA, Imperial is joining international partners from the US and Australia to work to decarbonise the global energy sector. EPICS is aiming to develop computing, economic, engineering and policy methods and tools that will allow for a 100% emissions-free power grid, with the researchers involved striving to establish a global innovation ecosystem.
EPICS is seeking to explore four themes through its research, where include harnessing the latest advances in computer technology to enable decision-making tools that are capable of handling the unpredictable nature of different renewable energies, and finding ways of accommodating wind, solar and storage resources into the grid, which will involve learning how to operate a significant number of inverters to connect them.
Other themes include developing economic analysis principles which are tailored for making decisions about how to design and then reliably operate 100% renewable power grids, as well as then using insights gained from these efforts to then develop strategies for achieving net zero power grids globally. These will then be used to reduce and eventually eliminate carbon emissions from other economic sectors.
For its part, Imperial is working alongside the University of Edinburgh, Newcastle University and University of Strathclyde on the innovations and changes needed in today’s power grid management and institutions to meet the demand of a grid with 100% renewable energy. The £6.67mn project has been funded by UK Research and Innovation.
