Distributed generation, also distributed energy, on-site generation (OSG), or district/decentralized energy, is electrical generation and storage performed by a variety of small, grid-connected or distribution system-connected devices referred to as distributed energy resources (DER).
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to electrical engineering.
Vehicle-to-grid (V2G) describes a system in which plug-in electric vehicles (PEVs) sell demand response services to the grid. Demand services are either delivering electricity to the grid or reducing the rate of charge from the grid. Demand services reduce the peaks in demand for grid supply, and hence reduce the probability of disruption from load variations. Vehicle-to-load (V2L) and Vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) are related, but the AC phase is not synchronised with the grid, so the power is only available to "off-grid" load.
This is an alphabetical list of articles pertaining specifically to electrical and electronics engineering. For a thematic list, please see List of electrical engineering topics. For a broad overview of engineering, see List of engineering topics. For biographies, see List of engineers.
A microgrid is a local electrical grid with defined electrical boundaries, acting as a single and controllable entity. It is able to operate in grid-connected and in island mode. A 'stand-alone microgrid' or 'isolated microgrid' only operates off-the-grid and cannot be connected to a wider electric power system. Very small microgrids are called nanogrids.
A phasor measurement unit (PMU) is a device used to estimate the magnitude and phase angle of an electrical phasor quantity in the electricity grid using a common time source for synchronization. Time synchronization is usually provided by GPS or IEEE 1588 Precision Time Protocol, which allows synchronized real-time measurements of multiple remote points on the grid. PMUs are capable of capturing samples from a waveform in quick succession and reconstructing the phasor quantity, made up of an angle measurement and a magnitude measurement. The resulting measurement is known as a synchrophasor. These time synchronized measurements are important because if the grid’s supply and demand are not perfectly matched, frequency imbalances can cause stress on the grid, which is a potential cause for power outages.
Islanding is the intentional or unintentional division of an interconnected power grid into individual disconnected regions with their own power generation.
Mohammad Reza Iravani is a professor in the Edward S. Rogers Sr. Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Toronto. He holds the L. Lau Chair in Electrical and Computer Engineering in same department.
The smart grid is an enhancement of the 20th century electrical grid, using two-way communications and distributed so-called intelligent devices. Two-way flows of electricity and information could improve the delivery network. Research is mainly focused on three systems of a smart grid – the infrastructure system, the management system, and the protection system. Electronic power conditioning and control of the production and distribution of electricity are important aspects of the smart grid.
An electrical grid is an interconnected network for electricity delivery from producers to consumers. Electrical grids consist of power stations, electrical substations to step voltage up or down, electric power transmission to carry power over long distances, and finally electric power distribution to customers. In that last step, voltage is stepped down again to the required service voltage. Power stations are typically built close to energy sources and far from densely populated areas. Electrical grids vary in size and can cover whole countries or continents. From small to large there are microgrids, wide area synchronous grids, and super grids.
Hassan Farhangi is Professor Emeritus at BCIT School of Energy and Retired Director of Smart Microgrid Applied Research Team (SMART) at the British Columbia Institute of Technology (BCIT) in Burnaby, Canada, and an adjunct professor at the School of Engineering Science at Simon Fraser University. He is known for his pioneering work in the design and development of Canada's first Smart Microgrid on Burnaby Campus of British Columbia Institute of Technology from 2007 onwards, as well as for establishing and leading an NSERC Pan-Canadian Strategic Research Network in Smart Microgrids, consisting of a large number of research-intensive universities (NSMG-Net) in Canada from 2010 to 2016, which trained hundreds of graduate students and published numerous peer-reviewed research papers. Dr. Farhangi retired from his academic and research appointment at British Columbia Institute of Technology (BCIT) in Sept 2022 to pursue his personal research interests.
Rajit Gadh is a Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science and the founding director of the UCLA Smart Grid Energy Research Center (SMERC), the UCLA Wireless Internet for Mobile Enterprise Consortium (WINMEC), and the Connected and Autonomous Electric Vehicles Consortium (CAEV).
Transactive energy refers to the economic and control techniques used to manage the flow or exchange of energy within an existing electric power system in regards to economic and market based standard values of energy. It is a concept that is used in an effort to improve the efficiency and reliability of the power system, pointing towards a more intelligent and interactive future for the energy industry.
Synchronverters or virtual synchronous generators are inverters which mimic synchronous generators (SG) to provide "synthetic inertia" for ancillary services in electric power systems. Inertia is a property of standard synchronous generators associated with the rotating physical mass of the system spinning at a frequency proportional to the electricity being generated. Inertia has implications towards grid stability as work is required to alter the kinetic energy of the spinning physical mass and therefore opposes changes in grid frequency. Inverter-based generation inherently lacks this property as the waveform is being created artificially via power electronics.
Mangalore Anantha Pai was an Indian electrical engineer, academic and a Professor Emeritus at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign. A former professor of electrical engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, he is known for his contributions in the fields of power stability, power grids, large scale power system analysis, system security and optimal control of nuclear reactors and he has published 8 books and several articles. Pai is the first India born scientist to be awarded a PhD in Electrical Engineering from the University of California, Berkeley.
Marcelo Godoy Simões is a Brazilian-American scientist engineer, professor in Electrical Engineering in Flexible and Smart Power Systems, at the University of Vaasa. He was with Colorado School of Mines, in Golden, Colorado, for almost 21 years, where he is a Professor Emeritus. He was elevated to Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) for applications of artificial intelligence in control of power electronics systems.
Wide-area damping control (WADC) is a class of automatic control systems used to provide stability augmentation to modern electrical power systems known as smart grids. Actuation for the controller is provided via modulation of capable active or reactive power devices throughout the grid. Such actuators are most commonly previously-existing power system devices, such as high-voltage direct current (HVDC) transmission lines and static VAR compensators (SVCs) which serve primary purposes not directly related to the WADC application. However, damping may be achieved with the utilization of other devices installed with the express purpose of stability augmentation, including energy storage technologies. Wide-area instability of a large electrical grid unequipped with a WADC is the result of the loss of generator rotor synchronicity, and is typically envisioned as a generator oscillating with an undamped exponential trajectory as the result of insufficient damping torque.
Commelec is a framework that provides distributed and real-time control of electrical grids by using explicit setpoints for active/reactive power absorptions/injections. It is based on the joint-operation of communication and electricity systems. Commelec has been developed by scientists at École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, a research institute and university in Lausanne, Switzerland. The Commelec project is part of the SNSF’s National Research Programme “Energy Turnaround”.
Gabriela Hug-Glanzmann is a Swiss electrical engineer and an associate professor and Principal Investigator of the Power Systems Laboratory at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) Zürich within the Department of Information Technology and Electrical Engineering. Hug studies the control and optimization of electrical power systems with a focus on sustainable energy.
Lingling Fan is a power engineer who is currently a professor of electrical engineering at the University of South Florida. Fan specializing in the dynamics, system identification, and control theory of electrical grids and electric power conversion, and especially on the integration into these systems of inverter-based resources connected to variable renewable energy sources such as wind power and solar power.
Iran