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.

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.

Asimenia Korompili and Prof. Antonello Monti published a paper on "Active Disturbance Rejection Controller with Virtual Impedance-based Current Limiter for Voltage Regulation of DC/DC Converters" in IEEE eGrid 2020 virtual conference. The work was funded by the BMBF project FEN DC-Sek. Asimenia attended the conference and she presented the paper. Furthermore Erdem Gümrükcü, Prof. Ponci and Prof. Monti published a paper "V2G Potential Estimation and Optimal Discharge Scheduling for MMC-based Charging Stations" in IEEE eGrid 2020. Funded by BMBF project MoMeWEC, Erdem attended and presented the paper.

Asimenia Korompili and Ting Wang presented a tutorial on "Control and Protection for Multi-Terminal DC Distribution Grids" during the IEEE eGrid 2020. The tutorial had three parts: 1. Converter-Level Control: Active Disturbance Rejection Control for Voltage Regulation in DC/DC Converters (presenter: Asimenia Korompili) 2. System-Level Control: Distributed Optimal Power Flow Algorithm for MTDC Distribution Grids (presenter: Asimenia Korompili) 3. Challenges and Methods for Fault Diagnosis in MTDC Systems (presenter: Ting Wang). The work presented in the tutorial was funded by the BMBF projects of FEN.

The OneNet project (One Electrical Network Infrastructure for Europe) started on October 1, 2020, and the official kick-off meeting was held on October 29, 2020, with around 70 project partners. The project is funded by the EU and runs for three years until September 30, 2023.

Trung Tran Thai will present his dissertation "Advanced hierarchical control structure for VOC-based Distributed Generation in multi-bus microgrid under different grid dynamics and disturbances" on November 6, 2020 at 09:00. The presentation is open to the public, but prior registration with Gaurav Roy is required.

Jens Sdun, former Bachelor student at ACS, submitted a paper about his Bachelor thesis to the Power and Energy Student Summit 2020 and won the best poster award.

A report on the digitally organized fall meeting of the Operating Systems Group was published under the link.

On 14.10.2020, the entire consortium gathered virtually for a full day event to update the current status of all work packages and take a closer look at the upcoming tasks and the next steps to be taken.

Prof. Antonello Monti received three awards by IEEE. He is awarded "For recognition as the Most Published Author in the Past 7 Years from Germany", "For recognition as a Top 70 Most Published Author of All Time", and "For recognition as a Top 70 Most Published Author in the Past 7 Years".

The MATRYCS project (Modular Big Data Applications for Holstic Energy Services in Buildings) started on October 1, 2020. The project is funded by the EU and runs for three years until September 30, 2023.

Gonca Gürses-Tran, Prof. Antonello Monti, and project partners from VITO/Energyville and University of Comillas published a paper on "Business use case development for TSO-DSO interoperable platforms in large-scale demonstrations". Gonca presented the work at the CIRED 2020 Workshop online.

Erdem Gümrükcü, Prof. Ponci and Prof. Monti published a paper on “Optimized Allocation of Loads in MMC-based Electric Vehicle Charging Infrastructure”. Erdem attended the virtual conference and presented the paper.

The program of the division meeting under the motto "From secure languages to secure systems" is now online, under the link. The meeting will take place exclusively online.

On 14-15 September 2020, the third plenary meeting took place remotely. Charukeshi Joglekar presented the results of the threat modeling and the unknown threats analysis related to the five large scale pilots. Moreover, Hendrik Flamme presented the development progress of the situation awareness and incident mitigation modules to the PHOENIX consortium.

Sonja Happ sucessfully defended her disseration today. Due to Covid restrictions a video conference was held. The title of her dissertation is "A Scalable Simulation Method for Cyber-Physical Power Systems".

The latest newsletter about PHOENIX has been published. You can find it under the Link of this newspost.

Gonca Gürses-Tran, Hendrik Flamme and Prof. Antonello Monti published the paper on "Probabilistic Load Forecasting For Day-Ahead Congestion Mitigation". The work was presented at the 16th International Conference on Probabilistic Methods Applied to Power Systems (PMAPS) on August 20, 2020.

This year Dr. Stefan Lankes organizes the autumn meeting of the Operating Systems Group of the German Informatics Society. It is entitled "From safe languages to safe systems" and will take place on September 24-25, 2020 at the E.ON Energy Research Center. Further information can be found under the link.

Lisette Cupelli successfully defended her dissertation "Datengesteuerte Methoden zur Spannungsregelung in Verteilnetzen: Ein Bottom-Up-Ansatz". Second referee was Prof. Dr. Veit Hagenmeier from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology.

Markus Mirz successfully defended his dissertation "A Dynamic Phasor Real-Time Simulation Based Digital Twin for Power Systems".

The ERIGrid project offers experts free access to leading smart grid laboratories. ERIGrid 2.0 begun in April 2020 and expands the research services and tools of the research infrastructure of the ERIGrid-1 project for validating smart energy networks with an electric backbone. More information about the project can be found under the link.

On 4th June 2020, Santiago Otero (ENEL) and Carlos Madina (Tecnalia) presented the status of the H2020 CoordiNet project during an online session for energy flexibility. Subsequent to the presentations and discussions of the E.DSO flexibility experts, Gonca Gürses-Tran introduced the H2020 project OneNet, which will kick-off in autumn 2020. OneNet follows three innovation concepts:
- Integrated market place for system services
- Moving from system-centric to consumer-centric approach
- Integrated and interoperable data and platform architechture.

Ivelina Stoyanova successfully defended her dissertation "Cooperative Energy Management and Cross-Domaion Optimization for Electro-Thermal Devices at City-District and City-Level". Second referee was Prof. Dr.-Ing. Dirk Müller (EBC).

Lukas Razik successfully defended his dissertation "High-Performance Computing Methods in Power System Simulation". Second referee was Prof. Dr.-Ing. Andrea Benigni (Forschungszentrum Jülich).

The first "Massive Open Online Courses" (MOOCs), which were developed within the ASSET project, are now available. The ACS offers the course "Challenges and Solutions in Future Power Networks", which is held by Gianluca Lipari.

On May 1^st, 2020, the second living lab for the energy transition started under the title "TransUrban.NRW". The institute ACS is also involved in the project. More information can be read at the link.

Dr. Marco Pau and Prof. Monti presented results and demos of the SOGNO project at the Stakeholder Consultation Event "Integrated Approach in the Management and Operation of Electricity Transmission and Distribution Networks" organized by CRE. The event was attended by more than 150 participants coming from academia, industry and associations all over Europe and it touched the topics of digitalization, integration of renewable energy, regulation and standardization in future smart grids.

Prof. Monti received a grant of 30 Million Euro from the European Commission to coordinate a large consortium aimed at defining the structure of the data platforms for energy in Europe. This is the first large international project of the new Fraunhofer Center Digital Energy was officially opened today in a ceremony in Hüttenstraße together with the NRW government and the Federal Ministry of Education and Research. Further information about the opening can be found at the link.

Prof. Monti was selected by the European Commission as chair of a new task force defining research and innovation priorities in energy area for Europe.

Due to the current situation in Germany, ARCS 2020 and all workshops unfortunately have to be cancelled. The submissions will be published as planned.

Alberto Dognini and Edoardo De Din represented ACS at "Navigating IoT Architectures and Standards Days"​ in Brussels. As part of OPEN DEI project​, ACS supported the organization of the workshop; moreover, the achievements of CoordiNet and PlatOne projects have been presented.

Dr. Marco Pau and Prof. Monti represented ACS during the SOGNO project meeting in Brussels. ACS has a leading role in the project, developing the algorithms and software platform for the field trials and directly hosting one of the pilots in the RWTH Campus grid.
More information about the project can be found at the SOGNO website.

The NRG-5 project had its final review in Brussels on February 13th 2020. The project consortium presented the results achieved during the duration of the research and innovation project. ACS, represented by Manuel Pitz and Gianluca Lipari, demonstrated the concepts and technologies developed during the project, in particular with respect to the system integration and laboratory evaluation.
 

Between January 26th and February 10th, Dr. Gianluca Lipari has been visiting the University of Melbourne at the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering. Dr. Lipari was hosted by the chair of Electrical Power Systems, led by Prof. Pierluigi Mancarella, as part of an ongoing joint cooperation within the two research groups.
Dr. Lipari gave a talk on Next generation ICT tools for active distribution networks, presenting the results and findings from research activities carried out in ACS and within ongoing research projects.

FEIN e.V. invites to a talk by Dr. Tim Schlösser about "AI-based state estimation for full observability of distribution grids", as well as an ask me anything sesstion with GridHound founder Artur Löwen. The event will be on March 3rd. More details can be found at the link.

On 4-5 February 2020, Hendrik Flamme presented the progress and challenges of the work package responsible for the situational awareness and incident mitigation modules at the PHOENIX plenary meeting in Athens.

The first Platone General Assembly took place at the premises of ACEA, the Roman electricity Distribution System Operator.

In the framework of the Exchange DAAD project "Distributed Stochastic OPF Algorithm for System-Level Control of DC Distribution Grids", Dr. Maria Vrakopoulou from the University of Melbourne visited ACS for the kick-off of the project. Dr. Maria Vrakopoulou will collaborate with Asimenia Korompili and Prof. Ponci in this two-year project for the development of distributed stochastic OPF algorithms. During her stay here, Dr. Vrakopoulou gave a lecture on "RES Uncertainty in Power System Operation".​