Head: dr hab. inż. Andrzej Bień, prof. nadzw. AGH

DPE&ECS www site

The deficiency of primary energy resources and too low efficiency of electrical energy generation, transfer, distribution and use necessitate creating intelligent managing systems. In practice this is means delivering electrical energy to the customers, or more broadly, providing high level power services with the use of IT, reducing the costs, increasing the efficiency and integrating distributed energy sources, including the renewable ones. This concept requires interdisciplinary studies, which finds its reflection in the structure of the Department. The competences of particular laboratories complement themselves, thanks to which the units can efficiently cooperate to realize most of the research and cover the didactic needs of Smart Grid technological platform:

Industrial electronics - apart from the quality of electrical energy delivery, the research also concentrates on rational processing and use of electrical energy. The existing law makes the customers limit the negative influence of their equipment on the power system. One of the technical ways of reducing this emission is building electrical/power electronic systems, which will be 'perceived' by the system as resistance loads, and the shape of current will be almost sinusoidal. This is especially important in disturbed electromagnetic environments - in exploitation and metallurgical industries. To this group also belong power electronic systems for the reduction of disturbances, generally called custom power and power electronic systems used for electrical drives and electrothermy.

Electrical machines - research on advanced tools for analyses and optimization (also based on artificial intelligence methods) in designing, producing and exploitation of electrical machines used in driving systems and also in energy generation systems. The desirable effect will be energy-saving designs of machines and control algorithms minimizing energy losses and torque pulsation.

Quality of electrical energy delivery - the energy suppliers, customers and equipment producers more and more frequently experience consequences of low quality of energy, or they themselves are the cause of energy degrading. This situation requires sufficient knowledge on the part of all energy market participants. Otherwise, considerable expenditures have to be borne from the central budget, or from the budget of particular power plants, industrial and individual customers, producers of equipment etc. This also applies to the construction of hardware and software infrastructure of smart metering and monitoring of electrical energy delivery parameters.

Distributed energy sources and storages - the research concentrates on power electronic interfaces of energy sources coupling mainly photovoltaic systems with the feeding network. Their purpose is the transmission of active energy to the network/receiver and also improvement of the quality of voltage at the connection point. Studies are performed on the flywheel energy storages.

Building automation - the investigations concentrate on a technologically advanced building with a set of sensors and detectors and one integrated system, which manages all the installations inside the building. Thanks to information coming from various elements of the system the building may react to the environmental changes inside and outside of it, leading to the maximization of its functionality, comfort, safety and minimization of exploitation and modernization costs.