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Country: Germany

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Description: Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) is a public corporation pursuing the tasks of a Baden-Wuerttemberg state university and of a national research center of the Helmholtz Association. The KIT mission combines the three core tasks of research, higher education, and innovation. With about 9,400 employees and 24,500 students, KIT is one of the big institutions of research and higher education in natural sciences and engineering in Europe.
In October 2014, KIT launched the Energy Lab 2.0 to investigate the interactions of different components of future energy systems. The overall objective is to accelerate the German “Energiewende” (energy transition) and in particular the integration of RES in electricity production. The smart platform is a network of facilities that joins electric, thermal and chemical energy flows as well as new information and communication technologies. In a real-time simulation environment, the Energy Lab 2.0 is testing new approaches to reliable energy storage and extending and stabilising power grid and power production. Research facilities include the already existing solar power storage park and the bioliq® pilot facility, as well as planned electrical, electrochemical, and chemical storage systems and a fuel-flexible gas turbine with current generator.

The EnergyLab 2.0 is an energy research platform set-up to allow scientists to explore energy related questions of tomorrow. It enables investigations across energy sectors and carriers. The Smart Energy System Simulation and Control Center (SEnSSiCC) as part of the EnergyLab 2.0 studies future electrical power grids with a large share of decentral renewable energy generation. Apart from the 1 MVA Power-Hardware-in-the-Loop (PHIL) Laboratory which is set-up and run by the Institute of Technical Physics the SEnSSiCC hosts a Microgrid, a Data Analysis and Simulation facility and a Visualization, Monitoring and Control Center, which are operated by KIT partners

Main Research Fields:

  • Smart Grid Lab and Control Center
  • 3D-Grid (electricity, heat, transport) and Smart metering
  • Modeling, simulation, monitoring and analysis of energy grids
  • Power-hardware-in-the-loop test facility
  • Involved in the Helmholtz Research programmes „Renewable Energies“, „Energy efficient materials“ and „Storage and crosslinked Infrastructure“.

 

Facilities:

PHIL Laboratory at Institute of Technical Physics (ITEP)

Description: At the start of 2016 the PHIL group at the Institute of Technical Physics (ITEP) of KIT completed the setup and commissioning of the 30 kVA PHIL training station. Very soon thereafter first examples of decentral energy generation in a grid have been implemented on the OPAL RT OP5600 real-time simulator in the HYPERSIM software environment. Open and closed loop PHIL experiments can be conducted. The work at PHIL Laboratory makes use of scaled transmission grid hardware components which were purposely acquired.
Equipment

30kVA PHIL training station

OPAL-RT 5600

Description: Real-time simulator with HYPERSIM environment

Spitzenberger&Spies

Description: Power amplifiers

Transmission grid components

Description: Scaled for use in PHIL environment

Photovoltaic test station

Battery and inverter unit

Simulation/Optimisation Tools:

  • HYPERSIM (OPAL-RT)
  • PowerFactory(DigSILENT)
  • MATLAB (MathWorks)

 

Testing Services:
Testing and validating of power hardware at the PHIL Laboratory is possible. The focus lies mainly on new technologies.

 

last updated: 21.07.2017

Karlsruhe Institute of Technology