The International Energy Agency and many governments across the globe are proposing policies aiming at increasing the penetration of renewable energy sources, such as wind and solar, into the electrical grid. These technologies however, produce intermittent power output and therefore, large-scale introduction of renewable energies to the grid present new challenges to grid operators.

The development of more reliable grid architectures and energy storage solutions will be critical to the large scale deployment of renewable energy. Energy storage also presents an opportunity for renewable energies as new advances in batteries and the production of energy carriers such as hydrogen would enable renewable electricity to meet the needs of other service sectors such as transportation, residential heating and manufacture. These sectors are currently being served by fossil fuels and therefore contribute to greenhouse gas emissions and urban pollution.

The aim of this theme is to develop advanced smart grid and energy storage technologies to enable the penetration of renewable energy into the grid. These grid and storage technologies will also be studied in the context of enabling rural communities to be grid independent. Based on the research strength at UAlberta, we will address the important technology gaps in the following aspects:

1) smart grid operation that considers increasingly available data and aging equipment.

2) future hybrid AC/DC grid structure that can efficiently integrate renewable energy and energy storage systems (mostly produce DC voltage).

3) both distributed and utility scale energy storage technologies.