Energy System Operations
Details
Content
This lecture provides the essential foundation for understanding the backbone of our modern world: the electric power grid. We start with the fundamentals of electrical engineering – from AC circuits to the per-unit system – and explore the key components that make up the grid, such as synchronous generators, transformers, and transmission lines. You will learn how these elements work together to maintain a stable system, tackling core operational challenges like frequency control and power flow analysis. The course consistently connects technical theory to the real world, discussing the principles of electricity markets and illustrating everything with practical examples from the ongoing energy transition.
Course outline
- Introduction and fundamentals
- Integrated electricity networks
- Some basic concepts and terms
- Alternating currents, single-phase circuits
- Three-phase circuits
- Structures of electricity supply grids
- Power generation and transportation
- Synchronous generators
- Power transformers
- Transportation (overhead lines, underground cables)
- Power balance and frequency control
- System frequency
- Control basics
- Control reserve and balance energy
- Power markets and grid operation
- Power markets
- Control reserve procurement
- Congestion management
- Power system analysis
- Nodal analysis
- Per-unit system
- The power flow problem
- Solution algorithms & example power flow calculation
- Linearizing the power flow
- Application: cross-border electricity trading
- Voltage control
- Selected topics of the energy transition
- Transition pathways
- Grid expansion and cost allocation
- Repetition, exercises
Highlights
This lecture appeared frequently in the Top 5 of all lectures in Sustainable Systems Engineering (see ranking website)
- #1 in winter semester 2024/25 (faculty teaching prize)
- #1 in winter semester 2022/23
- #3 in winter semester 2021/22 (under the former name Grid Integration and Control)
- #3 in winter semester 2020/21 (under the former name Grid Integration and Control)
- #4 in winter semester 2019/20 (under the former name Grid Integration and Control)
The lecture usually includes an excursion to a transmission system operator (SwissGrid or TransnetBW) and a large-scale conventional power plant (nuclear power plant Leibstadt or coal power plant Karlsruhe)