The technological growth, the economy, and the well-being of every country are based on the reliable and economic operation of its critical infrastructures such as the transportation systems, communication systems and electric power systems. Power and energy systems in particular, have recently regained their momentum. The main contributing factors to this are the deregulation of the power industry, the pressing need for energy generation from renewable energy sources and their reliable connection to the power grid, and the need for optimizing the performance of generation, transmission and distribution systems.

The use of intelligent systems in the area of power and energy systems helps in obtaining reliable operating decisions and in optimizing the performance of these systems. With the deregulation of electricity markets a lot of challenges have been created regarding the processes used and the decisions that need to be made for the connection of independent producers to the grid, distributed generation, and the structure and the rules of operation of the restructured systems. Further, power system security is a critical research area since, due to deregulation, ancillary services such as spinning reserve are not of high priority. In addition, there is an increased risk of malicious attacks on the power system. In terms of operational characteristics, the system security is endangered from hidden failures in the network, the absence of real time measurements, false evaluation of the system state by operators, or from insufficient security margins that can lead the system into instability. Consequently, there is a need to increase the system security through computational intelligence techniques or algorithms for the optimization of monitoring and decision-making systems or methods for the on-time warning of operators and the suggestion of corrective measures.

The research center is working on developing solutions in the area of power and energy systems through projects funded by the industry or by Cyprus and EU funding agencies. The researchers in this area are working on phasor measurement units used for transmission networks, economic dispatch solutions for generation units, fault location algorithms for distribution systems, development of solutions for the integration of renewable energy into the power grid, power quality in active networks, and load forecasting.

For more information contact: kios[at]ucy.ac.cy