Description

Critical energy challenges are forcing a rapid modification of the current energy infrastructure. Indeed, larger renewable energy penetration, more distributed generation and storage, and higher degree of autonomy are to be expected. In this new context, energy systems are frequently required to modify its current set-point and/or control inputs, in order to address a continuously changing energy demand/generation and/or reduce the effect of external disturbances. Technical, physical and economical constraints limits the amount of sensors that can be incorporated in energy systems. Consequently, there will be significant fluctuations of multi-dimensional unmeasured internal variables during the system operation, which have to be adequately monitored by the proper estimation algorithms.

Motivated by this aspect, this Ph.D work explores the idea of implementing observers in energy systems. Specifically, the Ph.D work studies the design of continuous-time nonlinear observers that can operate in systems with strong nonlinearities, significant measurement noise and parametric uncertainty.

The work is under the scope of the following projects:

• MdM: Unit of Excellence María de Maeztu (web)