Heaslip House - 7th Floor
Peter Bronfman Learning Centre
297 Victoria St. Toronto, M5S 1A4   map
Look for code CED

Smart Grid is increasingly seen as a means to facilitate climate friendly renewable energy sources (renewables) and to enable efficient use of electricity. A smart grid means operating the power system using communication technology, power electronic technologies, and storage technologies to balance production and consumption at all levels.

The increase in intermittent, non-predictable and non-dispatchable energy generation puts highest requirements on power balance control, from primary control through operational planning. The traditional control and communication system needs to be improved to accommodate for a high penetration of renewable energy sources.

In the traditional grid production capacity and consumption demand have been seen as independent of each other. So the traditional grid has been designed to cope with the maximum amount of production, and also with the maximum amount of consumption. This approach sets hard limits on both production and consumption.

A "smart grid" will control and influence both production and consumption to allow more of both to be integrated into the power system. To accomplish this goal, communication technology will be utilized to inform or encourage changes in production (i.e. generator units) and consumption (i.e. customers or devices) to maintain balance between production and consumption while at the same time optimizing energy efficiency, reliability and/or power quality.

In this presentation Madgy will talk about the necessary studies that are required to enable smart grids. These studies are: power system studies; communication system studies; control system studies and component studies. The obstacles of using the traditional system studies to tackle the smart grid problems will be also discussed in this talk.

Dr. Salama is Ryerson's Centre for Urban Energy (CUE)'s first Hydro One Visiting Fellow. Magdy comes to Ryerson from the University of Waterloo, where he is a University Research Chair and Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. He is a registered professional engineer, a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), and the author or co-author of 215 Journal Publications, 245 International Conference Papers (a total of 460 publications) and 16 Technical Reports.

Dr. Salama specializes in Energy Systems research in a number of areas, including Power Quality Analysis, Smart Grid Analysis, Renewable Energy Analysis, Power System Asset Management and Risk Analysis, Grounding System Analysis, and Distribution System Analysis. During his year at Ryerson, he will undertake research solutions to meet urban energy challenges.