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Newcastle University partners with Siemens in £2 million Smart Grid Laboratory project

Newcastle University has worked alongside Siemens Energy Automation Division to launch a £2 million Smart Grid Laboratory allowing researchers to put the electricity grid through its paces.

The state-of-the-art laboratory will allow researchers to simulate events such as power cuts due to severe weather.

Funded jointly by Siemens Energy Automation Division and the University, the Smart Grid Laboratory will allow experts to simulate changes in energy across the grid.

The technology will also be used to test how the anticipated electrification of the UK’s heat and transport networks will affect the grid.

The rise in heat pumps and electric vehicles, together with the growing importance of solar panels for energy generation, will mean increased energy flows through the electricity grid which could push the ageing system towards its limits.

The lab at the University’s campus is part of a larger Smart Grid project which includes a grid-scale energy storage test bed being developed on Newcastle Science Central.

Experts from the University, in collaboration with Siemens and Northern Powergrid, will be trialling new technologies for energy storage to efficiently and sustainably manage delivery of energy across the UK electricity grid.

Dr Bernd Koch, director of Siemens Microgrids, said: “With energy demand increasing, and new forms of energy generation like renewables becoming more widely used in the UK, it is obvious that we need to make sure that the corresponding energy infrastructure is able to cope.

“The partnership we have established with Newcastle University, and the research that will be carried out in this new facility, will help us to do just that. What we learn can then be used to help in the development of new technologies and solutions to energy management, which will have the potential to benefit us all in the future.”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Ellen Forster .