Afstudeercolloquium Onno de Graaf

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Analyzing Low Voltages Power Grids

A number of blackout incidents in the past have shown that the reliability and security of power grids need to be improved. There have been incidents causing unexpected blackouts in large parts of the power grid usage. Another problem is that a lot of energy in a large power grid is lost during transportation. The more power needed, the more power will be wasted during transportation. This makes it important to consider performance issues in transportation networks while doing research on the power grid.
The current power grid is a large network that has been designed to deliver electricity produced in large quantities by power plants that are preferably build not too close. As a result of this principal the power grid has evolved to its current state. The power grid is a very large and complex network that provides customers the energy they want to use.
Recent development in the energy market are a lot of alternative energy sources, which are generally small in comparison to traditional power plants, for example solar panels and wind mills but there are many other alternatives. A lot of these alternatives are suitable to produce energy close by, putting a solar power on your roof for example. This opens new possibilities for the infrastructure of power grids, and the energy market.
The question is how the current power grids support upcoming innovation and how can we find out. Roughly the idea is to increase understanding of the current situation of power grids to be able to compare with new ideas for example peer 2 peer power grids. What I have done in my project is just a little part of this process. Investigate a part of the current power grid to get an understanding of where we are. Although my project in this story does sounds not very exciting, the context of this project is rather exciting and something that will need to be dealt with in the coming decades.