Anna Pfendler M.Sc.

Working area(s)

Contribution of active distribution grids to the power system stability

Contact

work +49 6151 16-24673
fax +49 6151 16-24665

Work S3|10 211
Landgraf-Georg-Straße 4
64283 Darmstadt

After graduating from high school in 2011, I started my studies in Electrical Engineering and Information Technology at Technical University Darmstadt and decided to focus on Electrical Power Engineering. During my studies, I spent two terms at École Polytechnique de Montréal University in Canada and did an internship with ABB HVDC in Sweden. I wrote my Bachelor’s and Master’s Thesis with the department E5 of TU Darmstadt, where I started working as a research assistant in October 2018.

My main fields of interest are within power system dynamics and the integration of a growing share of generating plants based on renewable energy while maintaining system stability.

Ambitious climate strategies and targets require fundamental changes in the electrical power system: Renewable energy plants are increasingly replacing conventional ones and thus pose many challenges for the power system. The shutdown of conventional power plants (nuclear, coal) leads to a loss of mechanical inertia provided by the rotating masses of synchronous generators. In contrast, modern units (renewable energy plants, storage and loads) are often connected to the grid via converters and do not inherently contribute to the power system stability. New control concepts for power converters have emerged, which act as a voltage source and therefore can form the grid voltage and frequency. These grid-forming strategies have been implemented for microgrid applications, but are an ongoing research topic, e.g. for interconnected power systems.

In my research, I focus on control strategies for full power converters in interconnected low-inertia systems and develop an aggregation approach to replicate the dynamic behavior of active distribution grids with diversely controlled inverter based generation for investigations on transmission grid level.

Important aspects in this context are:

• Power system stability in low-inertia systems

• Integration of high shares of inverter based generation

• Control concepts for full power converter based generation in interconnected systems

• Short-term frequency stability and instantaneous frequency measurement

• Aggregated dynamic equivalent of active distribution grids