Control Applications in Power Engineering

Control theory has a wide area of applications in power engineering.

Some examples of our works

Solar Farm Fault Detection and Diagnosis: The theme is to use control-theoretic concepts to devise methods for automatic detection and diagnosis of under-performing solar panels in large solar farm spread over hectares of land.

Under-performance in solar panels could be due to faults, degradation or panel soiling.

The work involves extensive experimental work on an experimental setup at UQ and ongoing field trials at Gatton Solar farm. This work is of significant industrial and commercialisation potential as underperforming solar panels have major economic and safety consequences in large solar farms.

Renewable Energy Integration: The main objective is to apply advanced control theory for the control of grid-connected inverters utilised in industrial networks and renewable energy systems such as solar farms and battery storage systems. Despite significant advancements in inverter technologies, the underlying control methods continue to be rudimentary.

This research theme is aimed at applying advanced modern control methods to tackle operational challenges associated with the growing number of grid-connected inverters.

Demand-side management: A key tool in the effective and efficient management of future power networks comprising of distributed and intermittent energy resources. However, most of the existing demand-side potential to improve power network performance remains untapped mostly due to lack of adequate control algorithms. This research theme is to develop novel control methods based on advanced control theory for effective and robust management of distributed energy resources.