The role of electricity interconnection in future energy transition

The global imperative to limit climate change and guarantee sustainable growth is motivating a transition of the way of energy production, distribution, and consumption. This energy transition can include establishment of a global interconnection of electricity infrastructures located in different continents allowing sharing of renewable and non‐renewable energy resources available among different countries and continents.
Interconnection of electricity systems towards a worldwide power grid would require a lot of in advance studies and ex‐ante verification of various proposals. Representing the behaviour of systems in the real world implementations implies scientific evidence‐based modelling and simulations.
This website is intended to provide rational and initiative solutions to share expertise and laboratory hardware/software resources available in Europe and China to meet emerging requirements of simulating large-scale power grids like intercontinental electricity interconnection.

Interconnected Electricity Grid

Interconnecting many energy resources available in distant geographic locations would eventually reduce the intermittency effect of variable renewable energy; expending the networks towards locations in which efficiency of harvesting renewable energy is high could also be beneficial. In addition, a worldwide power supergrid can reduce the need for bulk storages, enhance security of supply, increase reliability in supply, decrease greenhouse gases emissions, improve load factor, and support power balancing.

The penetration of new large‐scale RES to the grid, the growing interest in smart grids with more controllability, and the trends towards intercontinental electricity interconnections which mainly implies undersea power transmission, makes high voltage direct current (HVDC) technology inevitable. An ultrahigh voltage direct current (UHVDC) cabled grid is seen by many as a way to solve or essentially diminish the following problems: transmission of increasingly large amounts of electric energy over very long distances; underground and subsea transmission; right‐of‐way, narrow transmission corridors and infrastructure permitting; reduction in power losses and investments (especially, for cable grids); interconnection of asynchronous systems; and RES balancing issues.

Deployment of any new systems and technologies and establishing appropriate control and management systems as well as new regulations requires accurate laboratory test and validation. Laboratory tests implies modelling and simulation of the systems, reproducing the system real behavior to study various scenarios.

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Energy transition: agreement between Politecnico di Torino and Shanghai Jiao Tong University

Politecnico di Torino and Shianghai Jiao Tong University signed the agreement for the creation of the Joint Centre for Energy Transition, Modelling and Simulation. The Joint Centre, coordinated by prof. Ettore Bompard and prof. Zheng Yan, at Italian and Chinese sides respectively, in Torino will be hosted inside Energy Center and it lies within the …