Due to the current situation, many ACS employees are working at home and can be reached via e-mail or their normal office telephone number (call forwarding). The secretary's office can still be reached during normal office hours at 0241 80 49700. For on-site appointments, please contact us by mail or telephone.

On 16-17 June, the final event of the H2020 project CoordiNet took place. Gonca Gürses-Tran participated in the hybrid event which attracted audience from research, industry and regulatory in Brussels.

The project coordination led by ENEL announced: “The coming CoordiNet Roadmap will show how flexibility may become more economically efficient for occasional congestion management than reinforcing the grid”.

Prof. Antonello Monti was awarded the 2022 Innovation Award of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia for his research on the IoT platform SOGNO (Service Oriented Grid for the Network of the Future). The SOGNO software platform provides distribution grid operators with improved control, through which better usability and optimization of energy sources are to be achieved. 

Innovation Minister Prof. Dr. Andreas Pinkwart emphasized: "Business and society have set themselves ambitious goals: By 2045, we want to have a climate-neutral economy in North Rhine-Westphalia. To ensure that this transformation succeeds, we are shifting towards a more sustainable energy supply based on renewables. This poses huge challenges for electricity distribution networks. Prof. Monti and his team have developed a platform to make better use of the capacities of existing grids thus supporting the expansion of renewables. Such innovative solutions can facilitate Germany's energy transition and boost acceptance among citizens."

Sriram Karthik Gurumurthy represented ACS in the TWINECS project meeting held in Barcelona, Spain on the 16^th and 17^th of May 2022. The meeting was hosted by UPC. The current status of the project and next steps towards Multi-physics simulations were discussed.

The OneNet General Assembly in 2022, took place on 12-13.05 in a hybrid model and was hosted by ACS in E.ON ERC, Aachen. Maliheh Haghgoo, Sonja Happ, and Iveliva Stoyanova represented ACS at the meeting. The topic of the meeting was heavily focused on the implementation of each demonstration.

Chief Engineer Bettina Schäfer was one of 7 RWTH executives to receive the "FAMOS for Family" award for family-friendly management style. In 2017, Prof. Antonello Monti had already received the award.

The consortium of the ectoControl 2.0 research project held a project meeting in Malmö from 05.04.2022 - 08.04.2022, which included a local pilot site visit of the research performed during the project.
Project ectoControl 2.0 is based on the partnership agreement between RWTH Aachen University and E.ON.
It researches modern control algorithms for bi-directional low-temperature district heating and cooling grids.
Based on the ectogrid™ pilot system "Medicon Village" in the southern Swedish city of Lund, ACS and E.ON are jointly developing holistic optimization methods as well as sector-coupled operation and control strategies for such low-temperature grids.

For further information on the E.ON ectogrid™ technology, please see the web link below.

General Assembly Meeting #5 took place on 30.03.2022.
Advisory Board Meeting #2 took place on 31.03.2022.

Deliverables submitted to EC end February 2022:
D2.2 "PlatOne Platform requirements and reference architecture (v2)"
D4.3 "Algorithm for ancillary services"
D5.5 "Use Case 2 Demonstration Report"
D9.5 "Project Management Plan Version 3"

At the ACS student event, the research of the institute, HiWi jobs and theses offerings are presented. It takes place on 25th January 2022 from 11:00 to 12:30 via Zoom.

CoordiNet held its General Assembly on January 14 2022 online. The focus of the discussion was put on the management of tasks in WP6: Markets design and platform, lessons learned. In a next step with a final data collection ex-post evaluation of the demonstrations are conducted by means of KPI analyses to which ACS is contributing. Finally, ACS support to identify a roadmap towards a new market design including the implementation standardized products for grid services. This roadmap will be a result of project analyses, stakeholder interviews and the learning of the CoordiNet demonstrations. Furthermore, Gender Balance and Diversity is an important topic for the CoordiNet consortium. For this, in 2021, ENEL has organized a Diversity Management Conference.

An article on "Optimal Management for Megawatt Level Electric Vehicle Charging Stations with a Grid Interface Based on Modular Multilevel Converter" has been published in "IEEE Access". The article is available for open access.

On Monday, December 20th 2021 at 11:00 the public presentation of the dissertation of Abhinav Sadu with the title "Towards resilient design of distribution grid automation and intended failures" will take place via Zoom. Afterwards, he will defend his dissertation.

The paper "Experimental measurement of frequency-dependent component impedances of grid-forming inverters in islanded microgrids", co-authored by Prof. Antonello Monti and Sriram Gurumurthy received the Best Paper Award of the IEEE PES ISGT-Europe 2021 conference.

In October 2021, Clara Köhnen (IAEW at RWTH Aachen University) and Gonca Gürses-Tran (ACS) were appointed to national experts representing Germany in ISGAN Annex 6: Power Transmission & Distribution Systems. On 09.11.2021, the RWTH project plan to bring the ISGAN Annex 6 into exchange with national TSO-VNB projects and to highlight common challenges and opportunities was presented. Through regular meetings with the task force, the perspective from Germany is brought into the current work program of the iea and thus into the exchange of the committed international experts. 

H2020 project I-NERGY released an open call. The open call addresses SMEs and startups developing artificial  intelligence algorithms and services applicable to the energy sector. Applicants can receive 50.000€ of funding under this programme.

BD4NRG held its second plenary meeting on 26th and 27th October. The two-day assembly was held entirely online, with all 35 project partners attending. The first day, focusing on the 12 Large-Scale Pilots, saw them presenting their use cases as well as their status going into the coming pre-pilot phase. On day 2, the BD4NRG Reference Architecture developed by ACS-led Work Package 2 was presented, followed by discussions on progress and next steps for the technical Work Packages 3, 4 and 5 in particular.

IEEE SmartGridComm 2021 will be hosted by ACS at the E.ON Energy Research Center from 25 - 28 October 2021. This year it will be held in a hybrid format, so guests can join the event in person or virtually.

An article on „Optimal load management strategy for large electric vehicle charging stations with undersized charger clusters” has been published in “IET Electrical Systems in Transportation”. This work is the main output of the joint research conducted by SINTEF Energy Research and ACS under MoMeWEC project. The article is available for open access at the link.

Dr. rer. nat. Stefan Lankes (ACS) and Dr. rer. nat. Sebastian Staacks (2nd Institute of Physics A) were awarded with the RWTH Lecturer 2021 certificate. The honor will take place on 18.11.2021 at the digitally conducted "Talk Lehre".

Platone reached the half-way point of its 4-year duration.
MS9 " All activities allow for all use case field testing " was reached by the German demo.
The following deliverables were submitted:
D1.3 Overview of regulatory aspects that impact the solutions tested in the demos in European countries
D5.4 Use Case 1 Demonstration Report
D6.5 Periodic report on lessons-learned (v2)
D7.3 CBA methodology
D8.3 High quality videos explaining the approaches in the 3 trials
D8.4 Intermediate report on the stakeholders engagement, exploitation, dissemination, communication and standardization activities
D8.5 Exploitation and Marketing Plan for the involvement of partners and future customers (v1)

​The Platone midterm conference "Growing the energy transition" took place on 14 and 15 September 2021 - boosting knowledge sharing and expertise for the energy transition.
Above 180 participants joined the virtual conference and contributed to vivid discussions in breakout sessions. Day 1 of the conference discussed the future of flexibility and digitalisation. On Day 2 strategies for consumer & citizen engagement and LECS in the energy transition were focussed. As part of Day1, the Platone Italian demo went live.

Milestone 8 "Field test fully operational in Italy" has been achieved. The corresponding deliverable D3.6 has been submitted to the EC.

The 1st Periodic Report was accepted by the EC and the result of the 1st Periodic Review is that the project implementation is satisfactory.

Prof. Laith Shalalfeh, of the German Jordanian University in Amman (Jordan) has been welcomed at ACS by Prof. Ponci and Mrs. Nouti. Prof. Shalalfeh will spend a two month period in Aachen working with ACS colleagues on the project “Frequency dynamics of low inertia power grid”, sponsored by DFG Grant to Support the Initiation of International Collaboration N. PO 1710/3-1. The whole team is looking forward to the technical, academic and cultural exchanges that this long awaited visit will bring.

The last FEIN e.V. Colloquium with Artur Löwen and Tim Schlösser from Gridhound GmbH took place on 02.07.2021. Further information can be found on the FEIN e.V. website.

LEGOS was mentioned on Hackaday.

Stefan Dähling has now successfully defended his dissertation "Cloud-based Multi-Agent Systems for Flexibility Management in Future Distribution Grids" before the examiners Prof. Antonello Monti and Prof. Dr. Andrea Benigni (FZ Jülich).

Erdem Gümrükcü gave a presentation on „Energy Management for Large Electric Vehicle Charging Stations” in Aachener Fachsymposium Straßenwesen 2021 - "Smart Infrastucture". The symposium is organized by the research association SETAC, which promotes and conducts the scientific exchange of ideas in the fields of road planning and design, earthworks and road construction, road operation and traffic engineering (traffic and operation), and tunnel construction and operation. More Information is found at the link.

As part of the MEISTER project, the publication "Power Quality Improvement in Distribution Grids via Real-Time Smart Exploitation of Electric Vehicles" was published, which can be found at the link.

Under the framework of the EU Horizon 2020 “MEISTER” project, ACS and the project partners (E.ON, Netze Schleswig Holstein AG, and CERTH) created a real-time monitoring infrastructure to capture the states of electric vehicle chargers; and accordingly managed the available electric vehicles as a potential source of energy in the need of one or more flexibility services demanded by the low voltage distribution system operator. In this regard, some results regarding the smart exploitation of the electric vehicles for power quality improvement of the distribution system (in terms of system voltage support, bidirectional power flow management, harmonic alleviation and power factor control) are found at the link.

"Lite Emulator of Grid Operations" educational platform was released in a public repository. Detailed information and multimedia material are available under the Concept section.

Under the leadership of areti, Platone has since April 2020 led the BRIDGE Action 7 to provide an update to the next Harmonised Electricity Market Role Model.

On Friday, June 25, 2021 at 09:00 the public presentation of the dissertation "Cloud-based Multi-Agent Systems for Flexibility Management in Future Distribution Grids" by Stefan Dähling will take place. This will be held via Zoom.

The following publication was chosen to be presented as Feature Paper within the MDPI Energies Journal (Volume 14, Issue 7): Dinkelbach, Jan; Nakti, Ghassen; Mirz, Markus; Monti, Antonello. "Simulation of Low Inertia Power Systems Based on Shifted Frequency Analysis". It is an open access paper and can be downloaded under the link.

A paper co-authored by Prof. Monti and Prof. Ponci has received the 2020 Best Paper Award of the IEEE Open Access Journal of Power and Energy: P. Kotsampopoulos, D. Lagos, N. Hatziargyriou, M.O. Faruque, G. Lauss, O. Nzimako, P. Forsyth, M. Steurer, F. Ponci, A. Monti, V. Dinavahi, K. Strunz, “A Benchmark System for Hardware-in-the-Loop Testing of Distributed Energy Resources”, IEEE Power and Energy Technology Systems Journal, vol. 5, no. 3, Sept. 2018“

Ting Wang could successfully defend his dissertation about "Fault Detection and Isolation in DC Distribution Grids".

ACS colleague Gonca Gürses-Tran moderated a workshop on AI applications in energy system operation. The organization was co-hosted with TU Berlin. The 2-hour workshop started off with impulse presentations from TSOs and DSOs activities and challenges in the context AI for Energy. It was followed by an interactive design-thinking workshop with over 60 participants to identify issues and new ideas in this business.

Prof. Ponci shares her professional story in Electrical Engineering for the initiative of her Alma Mater Politecnico di Milano for the International Women’s Day. The YouTube video can be found at the Link.

In addition to the seminars "Automation of Complex Power Systems", the new laboratory "Implementation of Automation Functions for Monitoring and Control" by Prof. Ponci will be offered in the summer semester. Further details as well as the links to the courses in RWTHonline can be found at our page "projects and seminars" under the tab "academics".

ACS has been serving as Technical Manager of the H2020 project SOGNO from 2018 to 2020. In the framework of this project, a new architecture for service-oriented network automation has been developed and tested in real grids in 3 different test sites. The results of the project influenced further research projects such as the H2020 Platone, coordinated by Prof. Monti, where the platform is further developed and tested in 3 field tests in Germany, Greece and Italy. At the same time the ACS group thought it made sense to create the conditions for a long term sustainability of the project. For this reason, Prof. Monti together with Dr. Mirz, proposed the SOGNO architecture as project in the Linux Foundation Energy. The Foundation recently accepted the project making the work of ACS a candidate to become a de-facto worldwide standard.

This success got the attention of the press as shown by a recent paper in Forbes mentioning the research in ACS as key innovation for the grid of the future.

Dr. rer. nat. Stefan Lankes, Academic Director of the Institute for Automation of Complex Power Systems, was awarded with the title “RWTH Lecturer” in 2021. The title of RWTH Lecturer is an honor for distinguished researchers from the group of non-professorial academic staff who stand out for their extraordinary teaching and research activities.

The 3rd General Assembly of project Platone has taken place.

Stefan Dähling and Sonja Happ won the best paper award in the IET Cyber-Physical Systems: Theory & Applications for their work "Swarm-based automation of electrical power distribution and transmission system support".

Asimenia Korompili and Prof. Antonello Monti published a paper on "Active Disturbance Rejection Control for DC/DC Converters in MTDC Systems" in IEEE COMPEL 2020 virtual conference. The work was funded by the BMBF project FEN DC-Sek. Asimenia attended the conference and she presented the paper.

On Tuesday, November 17, 2020 at 15:00 the ACS Student Event will take place. There the activities of the institute will be presented, as well as possibilities for final theses and HiWi jobs. Further information can be found under the link.

Trung Tran Thai successfully defended his dissertation "Advanced Hierarchical Control Structure for VOC-based DG in Multi-bus Microgrid under different grid dynamics and disturbances". Prof. Antonello Monti and Dr.-Ing. David Raisz were his referees.

A Platone advisory meeting took place on 05.11.2020.

The kick-off meeting of project HYPERRIDE (Hybrid Provision of Energy based on Reliability and Resiliency by Integration of Dc Equipment) has been held on 22nd - 23rd October, 2020. The project is funded by the H2020 programme and its duration is four years. The ACS Institute will concentrate its work in the development of automation services for the hybrid AC/DC grid and the implementation of metering devices specifically dedicated to DC technology.

The concluding digital event of the FISMEP project will be held on 19th November. The main results will be highlighted and field experts will discuss the future wide implementation of innovative platforms for smart energy. Additional information and registration at the link.