IIT-Roorkee has announced that it has become a part of an Indo-US consortium working on a project for smart energy distribution system, Smart Grids. This is a $75 million 5-year project named US-India Collaboration for Smart Distribution System with Storage (UI-ASSIST). And the project is part of the Indo-US Joint Clean Energy Research and Development Center (JCERDC).
The Target
1. It will work towards addressing issues related to the adoption and deployment of smart grids including storage in the distribution network
2. One of the most important aspects of this project is to bridge the gap between smart grid, storage and renewable energy research in order to facilitate its subsequent adoption
3. Under this mega project, IIT Roorkee has been awarded a grant of over Rs. 4.17 crore.
4. Will conduct research and deploy new smart grid and energy storage technologies
4. Help in modernizing grids, make them smarter and increase their resilience and reliability.
The Teams
The consortium will be divided into 2 teams, the Indian Core team and the US Core team.
The Indian Core team will comprise of IIT Kanpur, IIT Roorkee, IIT Delhi, IIT Madras, IIT Bhubaneshwar and the Energy Resource Institute, New Delhi.
The US Core team will comprise of Washington State University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Texas A&M University.
IIT Roorkee will investigate the operation of microgrids embedded distribution system under grid unbalance, irregular switching of diverse microgrids and extreme grid conditions.
The Need
Speaking about the smart grid project, Prof N P Padhy of IIT-Roorkee said: “In 2012, India, in its peak summers, had to experience a serious blackout where the entire country was under dark for three days, except the southern part. The reason for this was an increase in demand and cascading failure of generators. Thus, the concept of Microgrid has gained a lot of interest in recent days.”
