The Smart Power Laboratory (SPL, https://smartpower.bme.hu/en) research group of the Department of Electric Power Engineering at Budapest University of Technology and Economics (BME) has been awarded CELSA Research Funding for the second time.
The Central Europe Leuven Strategic Alliance (CELSA) aims to foster collaboration among research groups at its partner universities and promote the development of joint research projects. The programme supports the further advancement of successful research, development, and innovation (R&D&I) activities while strengthening scientific excellence and international cooperation. Its long-term objective is to enable funded research teams to reach a level of maturity that allows them to successfully compete for Horizon Europe and other prestigious European research and innovation grants.
Within the PHRACTALS (Post-Hazard Power System Restoration and Control Through Advanced Learning Systems) project, funded in 2022, researchers from BME, KU Leuven, and the University of Ljubljana developed innovative solutions to ensure stable power system restoration following a large-scale blackout. The project addressed the extremely weak grid conditions encountered during system restoration, where maintaining stability is particularly challenging. The Smart Power Laboratory contributed by developing dynamic models of aggregated photovoltaic power plants.
Building on this successful collaboration, the three universities will continue their joint research within the newly funded RESCUED (Resilient Stability through Collective User Engagement of Distributed Resources) project. The project investigates how active or flexible consumer-side resources can contribute to the stability and resilience of future power systems, and to what extent their coordinated operation can support secure grid operation.
The Smart Power Laboratory, represented by Bence Sütő and Dr. Dávid Raisz, will contribute to the project by defining requirements for power electronic devices – particularly grid-forming inverters – and by further developing the concept of emergency islanded operation. These activities will be supported through theoretical analyses, simulation studies, and experimental laboratory validation.