The technology developed by the Polytechnic University of Valencia (UPV) and the Jaume I University (UJI) will help highly polluting thermal plants be replaced with renewable plants, meeting European decarbonisation goals.
Researchers of the Polytechnic University of Valencia (UPV), belonging to the Institute of Industrial Automatics and Computing (ai2), and of the Jaume I University of Castellón (UJI) have developed a system that makes it so that, after a blackout, the electricity supply may be restored thanks to renewable energies. The UPV team presented it at the WindEurope Offshore 2019 summit, held last week in Copenhaguen.
Currently, when electric power collapses, in many countries the supply is guaranteed by way of thermal plants that must be permanently turned on in case there is a blackout, even if they are not producing energy. The alternative proposed by the ai2 team of the UPV consists of taking advantage of the potential of offshore wind farms to avoid recurring to thermal plants.
The system is the result of 20 years of work that the renewable energy team of the ai2 institute has dedicated to controlling offshore wind turbines, especially through the European project H2020 PROMOTioN, where the UPV is the sole Spanish member – out of a total 34 partners from 11 countries -, and national project INTER-WIND-HVDC, developed in collaboration with the UJI.
“The work of the ai2 institute team will contribute significantly to highly polluting thermal plants being replaced by renewable plants to meet European decarbonisation goals,” highlights Ramón Blasco, coordinator of the ai2 group that has developed this new technology. Furthermore, the use of this renewable technology would substantially decrease the duration of blackouts, such as the one that took place, for example, back in September in Tenerife.
WindEurope Offshore 2019 summit
Ai2 professor Ramón Blasco took part recently in the panel on auxiliary services for large offshore wind farms, held during the WindEurope Offshore 2019 summit. The objective of the panel was to progress towards making it possible so that an electrical system with a high percentage of renewable energy may work sturdily, including integrated systems of energetic storage.
In this framework, the researcher presented the progress achieved thanks to the PROMOTioN project. The WindEurope Offshore 2019 summit was inaugurated by Prince Frederik of Denmark and the European Commission Energy Director-General, Ditte Juul Jørgensen. Furthermore, the panel on auxiliary services for offshore wind farms was comprised of, in addition to the UPV researcher, Daniel Fraile, Head of Marketing for the European wind association (WindEurope), Adrian Timbus, business portfolio Vice-president for electric networks ABB and Philip Johnson, the Head of Network Services of Ørsted.
During the WindEurope Offshore 2019, European wind association WindEurope set at 450GW the goal for offshore wind farms for 2050. This goal is aligned with the “Europe Green Deal” of the European Commission. According to sources of WindEurope and the International Energy Agency, “the objectives are ambitious, but reachable”. These challenges were being posed just days before the COP25 climate change summit that has taken place these days in Madrid.