Research, Demonstration, and Commercialisation of DC Microgrid Technologies

Project Information

RDC2MT

Grant agreement ID: 734796

DOI 10.3030/734796

Closed project

EC signature date 18 November 2016

Start date 1 February 2017

End date 31 January 2022

Funded under

• EXCELLENT SCIENCE - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions

Total cost € 445 500,00

EU contribution € 279 000,00

Coordinated by

LOUGHBOROUGH UNIVERSITY
United Kingdom

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - RDC2MT (Research, Demonstration, and Commercialisation of DC Microgrid Technologies)

Reporting period: 2019-02-01 to 2022-01-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

Research, Demonstration and Commercialisation of DC microgrid Technologies (RDC2MT) project aims to address new challenges of direct current (DC) microgrids in the applications of DC powered houses and DC distribution networks through collaboration research.

According to the history perspective, Alternating Current (AC) power supply system has been the standard choice. However, with the development of power electronics technologies and distributed energy source and storage, DC power supply systems have gained a continually increasing interest in the last several years. Compared with conventional AC systems, DC systems have the advantages of higher reliability and efficiency, simpler control, and natural interface to increased numbers of DC renewable generation, energy storage and electrics loads. It will one of the attractive solutions support the EU’s climate goals (European Commission 2015), and resource-efficiency strategy (European Commission 2011).

The project has the following objectives:
1. To optimize the fuel cell design, and study the feasibility of integrating fuel cell Combined Heat and Power (CHP) in high efficiency DC house application
2. To develop novel power electronics converters with integrated communication, stabilisation and battery management for DC microgrid applications
3. To develop advanced control and optimisation strategy for DC microgrids in the applications of DC powered house and community.
4. To demonstrate and evaluate project findings on DC demonstration sites within the consortium, which includes two new DC microgrid demonstration sites within an EU funded project that will be coupled to the RDC2MT program.
5. To assess the commercial potentials of latest project findings.
6. To strengthen the inter-sectoral and international relationship and enhance early career researcher interdisciplinary skills and international experience through gaining new knowledge, expertise and techniques in individuals and the collaboration partners.
7. To disseminate project innovations with strong low carbon impact to Europe and worldwide.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

From 1st Feb 2017 to 31st Jan 2022, 61.5 person-months secondments have been implemented in this project.

The project has achieved the following main technical results, and disseminated them through publishing 7 journal papers, presenting 15 conference papers, and organizing project events:

1. Novel integrated power/data transfer through common DC bus, four papers have been published.

2. Techno-economic feasibility study of a hybrid off-grid DC system for combined heat and power generation and hydrogen storage in remote islands. One paper has been published.

3. Battery storage management for DC microgrids, two papers has been published.

4. Control, modelling and stability of DC distribution systems, nine papers have been published.

5. DC microgrid operation optimisation, six papers have been published.

30th April 2017, the project website www.rdc2mt.org has been released.
5th and 6th September 2017 The first RDC2MT project annual meeting and workshop was held in TU Delft.
Nov 2017: project deliverable "ESR Industrial training" has been completed, 6 early stage researchers (ESRs) completed 8 person-months in total secondments with project industrial partner DCBV, and gained industrial experience by work on industrial environment.
March 2018: Our Chinese partners have successfully secured a match funding from Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST). The project is entitled “Plug-and-Play Operational Principle and Applications of Structured DC Microgrid”. The total project budget is 3.95 million CNY (equivalent to 500k+ EURs), and the project period is 3 years from April 2018.
April 2018: RDC2MT Project 1st year progress report (deliverable 4.1) was approved.
7th June 2018: The second RDC2MT project workshop and 1st ESR poster competition was held in TU Delft.
8th June 2018: The RDC2MT project mid-term meeting was held in TU Delft.
November 2018: The RDC2MT project workshop and project meeting were held in Zhejiang University, China
August 2019: the third RDC2MT annual project meeting was held in TU Delft
October 2019: the third RDC2MT project workshop was held in Loughborough University
Jan 2020: Deliverable report D1.2 and D1.3 were approved by EC
June 2020: We organized a special session on DC microgrid in ISIE 2020.
July 2020: The project was extended for 12 months due to COVID-19
Oct 2021: Deliverable report D1.1 D2.1 and D2.2 were approved by EC
Feb 2022: Deliverable report D2.3 and D3.4 were approved by EC

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

DC microgrid technologies have been applied to data centres, electric vehicle power systems, and telecommunications. A number of applications of DC microgrid in future smart grid scenario have been proposed, which includes high efficiency households, renewable energy parks, and hybrid energy storage systems, etc. However, most of the DC microgrid researches are still simulation-based.

Based on the unique expertise and world class facilities of the consortium, RDC2MT project will focus on five cutting-edge research challenges.

In DC microgrids, power electronics converters are crucial components. RDC2MT project will work on integrating communication into power electronics converters. Prototypes of 1kW modular DC/DC converter with integrated communication function will be designed and implemented by the end of the project.

Battery state of charge (SoC) and state of health (SoH) estimations are still open research topics, and many different methods have been proposed. In RDC2MT project, we are aiming to aim to implement an on-line Electrochemical Impedance Spectroscopy technique to estimate the SoC and SoH of batteries.

Fuel cell for household applications is a new market, and can make a fundamental shift in the sourcing of energy. In RDC2MT project, research work will be performed to develop, understand and optimize a microscale fuel cell system for high efficiency DC house.

For DC microgrids, power electronics converters provide many flexible functions, but also introduce more complex and fast internal dynamics. In RDC2MT project, we will develop systematic theories and tools for stability analysis and design of power-electronics-based DC microgrid systems.

The research on the coordinated control of DC microgrids with multiple power converters is still quite early stage. In RDC2MT project, different optimisation strategies will be studied for the optimal operation of DC microgrids in DC house/building applications.

Potential impact:
Based on the EU energy sector economic analysis, the energy sector directly employs about 1.6 million people in the EU, and generates an added €250 billion to the economy. The EU has also endorsed ambitious greenhouse gas (GHG) emission reduction targets and associated targets for the decarbonisation of the energy sectors. RDC2MT project will produce a direct impact on this by the development of a cost-effectiveness strategy to integrate renewable energy sources and energy storage into the European household energy sector, which will result in less greenhouse gas emissions.

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