College of Engineering and Built Environment
PhDScholarship 2015 Project
Lead supervisor name &
contact details:
Dr. Keith Sunderland
ph: +353-21-4024882
e: keith.sunderland@dit.ie
Research Centre/ Institute
Name and Website (if
applicable)
Electrical Power Research Centre (http://www.dit.ie/eprc/)
Scholarship Details
The stipend is €10,000 per annum. The cost of EU academic
fee will be covered for the duration of the scholarship.Non-EU
applicants are eligible to take up the scholarships, but they
will be required to fund the fee differential.Schools will make
available a desk space, PC along with a modest bursary for
travel, conferences and some limited materials.
Dublin Energy Lab (http://www.dit.ie/dublinenergylab/)
Subject Area
Title of the Project
Urban electricity networks for Smart Cities: The application of
climate knowledge for (distributed) renewable generation
optimisation within cities.
Project Abstract(max 300 words)
More than half the World’s population live in urban areas, occupying less than 3% of the Earth’s
ice-free land area. Cities are responsible for between 71% and 76% of CO2 emissions from global
final energy use, much of it derived from fossil-fuel based electricity generation. To transform
into a sustainable, low carbon economy, cities need to develop smart energy networks that can
generate and deliver renewable electricity locally, in a predictable, consistent and optimised
manner. Central to this transformation therefore, is the linkage of primary energy resource
understanding/modelling, with distributed generation (DG) and distributed storage (DS)
optimisation, which is in an urban context. This research will therefore combine detailed climate
modelling of the resource(s) at the urban scale with enhanced electricity network simulation. The
former will allow the potential for primary energy production to be predicted while the latter will
investigate the implications of renewable electricity contributions and associated storage issues.
This research will ultimately develop an electro-climatologically informed test-bed, which can be
utilised in planning for increased integration of renewable ‘prosumers’ into smarter electricity
networks. Moreover, as a test bed, the other aspect concerning the deployment of smart
electricity networks, namely controllable energy aggregation, can also be accommodated and
developed.
The PhD study will include, but not limited to:

Modelling and simulation, measurement campaign management
Please indicate the student requirements for this project
Masters in Electrical Power Engineering and a BE/BSc. (2.1 minimum). Applicants should be
proficient in MATLAB/Simulink and knowledge in GIS platforms would also beneficial. Desirable
applicants should have a proficiency in power systems analysis.
Deadline to submit
applications (only for funded
projects)
Monday, 12th October, 2015