The humble electricity grid, often taken for granted, is being asked to bear the brunt of an unimaginable and sudden shift towards electrification and renewable energy. Helping to provide the innovation needed to ensure our power supply remains stable and efficient is a partnership between the University of Alberta and electric grid giant FortisAlberta.
U of A engineering professor Ryan Li, whose research focuses on enhancing the resilience and capacity of our electrical infrastructure, and his team are tackling the critical issue of "de-bottlenecking" distribution systems — a challenge made urgent by the growing adoption of electric vehicles (EVs) and other new electrical loads.
"If everybody's charging at the same time, there is a huge stress on the distribution system, which is not designed to deal with these types of new loads," explains Li. "With more renewable energy and the increasing electrification on the consumer end, the grid is not really designed to accommodate a very high percentage of this."
While the current power system predominantly uses AC (alternating current), many new technologies, from energy storage to consumer devices, are based on direct current, or DC. Li, who has been an innovator in DC technologies for two decades, says the advantage of DC becomes clear when considering the surge in electric vehicle adoption.
"What's going to happen when all these residential electric vehicles get plugged in and in a future where so much more power is needed?"
