Research Work and Recent Publications

Research: Headliner

Projects & Research Experience

Showcase of Work

Provision of Voltage support from Electric Vehicle Charging Infrastructure

2022-2023

One of the critical requirements for maintaining system health is the availability of adequate reactive power reserve. Usually preferred to be generated locally in the distribution network, the network operators often make significant investments in procurement and installation of reactive power compensation devices, such as capacitor banks, synchronous condensers etc. However, DC EV chargers can be configured to enable four quadrant operation and help in reactive power compensation for the network . The four-quadrant operation of DC chargers enables them to provide reactive support irrespective of whether the charger is being used for charging an EV. However, the quantum of reactive support is capped by the rated capacity of the charger and the EV charging active power load. In this study, the capabilities of an EV charging stations to support the system voltage profile under different operating conditions are explored.

Development of Vehicle-to-Everything (V2X) in India – Technology review, Techno-commercial analysis, Guidelines and Recommendations

(2021-2022)

V2X, commonly referred to as “Vehicle to Everything” is a technology that enables electricity to be sent from the battery of an electric vehicle to any external system such as a home, building, standalone load, vehicle or grid. It includes many different use cases such as vehicle-to-home (V2H), vehicle-to-building (V2B), vehicle-to-grid (V2G), vehicle-to-load (V2L), etc. The V2X market is relatively nascent in India whereas there have been several pilot projects and demonstrations in some countries. It is well known that many of the system's benefits will not be fully realized until suitably policy, regulatory and business schemes are designed. Lack of awareness of the technology involved, clarity of techno-economic benefits of various uses cases and lack of appropriate business models / commercial frameworks are considered to be the biggest impediments for uptake of V2X in India.

A simulation-based study, for gaining an understanding of the technical know-how of V2X has been performed, followed by techno-economic analysis to determine viability of V2X in Indian context. The planned simulation study is strongly aligned towards the Indian distribution network. The review and the simulation study helped in determining Techno-economic gaps including the policy and regulatory issues that need to be addressed for V2X roll-out in India. The study is also aligned to provide recommendations to promote the growth of V2X in Indian EV ecosystem.

Integration of Electric Vehicles Charging Infrastructure with Distribution Grid: Global review, India’s Gap Analysis and Way Forward

(2020 - 2021)

This project which is focused on conducting Indian and International review on overall environment related to EV charging is under the NDC-TIA India component. This project is carried out by consortium led by IIT Bombay along with Florence School of Regulation (FSR), Technical University Denmark (DTU), Cardiff University and Universidad Pontificia Comillas.

The Nationally Determined Contribution – Transport Initiative for Asia (NDC-TIA) is a regional initiative funded by the International Climate Initiative (IKI) of German Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety (BMU). It is a joint project of seven organizations and with the engagement of China, India, and Vietnam. The organizations partnering with GIZ on this project are World Resources Institute (WRI), International Council on Clean Transportation (ICCT), International Transport Forum (ITF), Agora Verkehrswende, REN21 and SLOCAT. For the India component of the NDC-TIA project, the implementing partner is the National Institution for Transforming India (NITI Aayog).

Design of Contingency Reserve from Electric Vehicles

(2020 - 2021)

In the event of a sudden failure of a generator or a transmission line, or the sudden increase of a large amount of load, there is a sharp drop or rise of frequency depending on whether there is an active power deficiency or surplus in the grid. The rate of change of frequency (RoCoF) is arrested by the inertia of the system. The system inertia is the kinetic energy stored in the system due to the rotating masses of the synchronously connected conventional generating units. With the increasing replacement of the conventional generating units by renewable sources, the inertia in the system has seen a steady decline over the year, as the renewables sources do not generally provide inertial support, which has forced the system operators to look for other sources of inertia.

EVs with their controllable charging may be exploited in this regard, to provide inertial and primary frequency support to the power system. This project tries to identify, the optimal control structure, to achieve the desired response from an EV, providing emulated inertia and primary frequency reserve.

Estimation of Load Inertia in the Power System

(2019 - 2020)

With decreasing share of conventional generation, the inherent inertia of the system has seen a gradual decline, thereby increasing the importance of accurate estimation of inertia of power system. Besides generating stations, a share of inertia is also supplied by the connected loads. This study aims at estimation of contribution of loads to system inertia. It is a bottom-up approach where using machine learning algorithm the loads at each bus is segregated into load types, which is dependent on whether the load zone is a predominantly residential zone, a commercial zone or an industrial zone. The response of these loads to an active power imbalance event is then aggregated for estimation of inertial contribution by system loads.

Optimization of Battery Capacity for Coordinated Dispatch with Offshore Wind Farm

(2018 - 2019)

This project estimates reliability of an Offshore Wind Farm (OWF) considering wake effect as well as the failure probability of wind turbines. Next, an optimum size of a Battery Energy Storage System (BESS) is determined taking into consideration different criteria such as Net Present Cost (NPC) of the BESS, Expected Energy Not Supplied (EENS), Loss of Load Hour (LOLH) and Energy Curtailment. The proposed methodology provides flexibility to the decision maker to select the optimum BESS size (among different types) to minimize the mismatch between scheduled commitment and actual dispatch. The lifecycle of BESS is dependent on the charging/discharging cycle. So, an estimation of life cycle of the different types of BESS based on their charging/discharging pattern has been done. To calculate wake effect in the OWF, Jensen’s wake model has been considered while OWF reliability analysis has been conducted considering random failure of wind turbines (WTs). Using the data of probability of WT failure, a sequential Monte Carlo method has been developed to generate the failure matrix. Two different scenarios, viz; without any wind speed forecast error and with ± 20% error in wind speed forecast, have been studied to justify the effectiveness of the proposed approach. The proposed methodology developed in MATLAB® has been used to estimate reliability of Horns Rev-1 OWF.

Determination of existing primary frequency reserve of different countries

(2019)

2019

Anghsu Nath, Santanu Paul, Zakir Rather and Sadhan Mahapatra, 'Estimation of Offshore Wind Farm Reliability Considering Wake Effect and Wind Turbine Failure,' 2019 IEEE Innovative Smart Grid Technologies - Asia (ISGT Asia), Chengdu, China, 2019, pp. 3866-3871, doi: 10.1109/ISGT-Asia.2019.8880887

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Research: List

Invited Talks

Electric Vehicle Integration in India: Status Quo, Challenges and Way Forward

2022

Tezpur University, October 2022

Electric Vehicle Charging Infrastructure Integration with Distribution Grid

2021

Tezpur University, Tezpur, Assam

Wind Energy: It's Uses and Challenges

2021

Assam Engineering College, Guwahati, Assam

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