Public Thesis Defense of Thuy-Hai NGUYEN - IMMC

Improved Modelling of Offshore Wind Generation Using Machine Learning - On a Reliable Supply of Electricity in Future Power Systems by Thuy-Hai Nguyen

Mardi 4 février à 17h30 à l’UMONS : Salle Macquet, 31 Boulevard Dolez, 7000 Mons

Energy is the bedrock of modern economies and societies, yet its production and consumption are also responsible for 75% of greenhouse gas emissions, making it the primary driver of climate change. But global warming is not the only negative impact that human activity has on our planet. The energy transition must aim not only at counteracting climate change, but also at returning us below the 9 planetary boundaries that describe limits beyond which the environment may not be able to self-regulate anymore. Equally important is that the energy transition must be fair, ensuring a social foundation of well-being and allowing everyone to thrive in an environment respectful of the Earth. Encompassed within the basics needs of life is notably access to energy. 
Renewable energy sources are expected to play a significant role in the energy transition, because of their low emissions of greenhouse gases. However, they affect other planetary boundaries as they require a lot of raw materials and a considerable surface area. Moreover, renewable energy sources are inherently intermittent, fluctuating, and highly unpredictable, thus posing many challenges to ensure a reliably supply of electricity. A detailed planning and usage throughout the year will be necessary to avoid a spillage of electricity but also to guarantee access to electricity for everyone, at all times, and at an affordable price. 
This thesis focuses on offshore wind energy and its enhanced modelling, with the purpose of improving the integration of future offshore wind farms in power systems by assessing their impact on the reliability of supply and their ability to provide balancing services. Machine Learning techniques are leveraged to build a fast, accurate and topology-aware surrogate for offshore wind farms, able to capture complex aerodynamic phenomena and to generalize to any layout configuration while keeping a reasonable computation time. This model is then directly integrated within adequacy studies aimed at evaluating the reliability of electricity supply in future power systems with a high share of offshore wind generation. The generalisation capabilities of the surrogate enable to consider the uncertainty related to the topology of future wind farms, as their layout is still unknown. Outcomes show that disregarding power losses due to aerodynamics phenomena arising in offshore wind farms leads to an underestimation of reliability indices, thereby concealing adequacy issues and preventing the right investments to ensure a sufficient reliability of the system. Finally, we focused on the foreseen participation of offshore wind farms to reserve markets, aimed at restoring balance within the system in case of sudden perturbations. We explored how the layout of future wind farms can be optimized to account for their participation to ancillary frequency services. 

Jury members:
Professeur DE JAEGER Emmanuel (UCLouvain), supervisor
Professeur VALLEE François (UMONS), supervisor
Professeur BRICTEUX Laurent (UMONS), chairperson
Professeur LOBRY Jacques (UMONS), secretary
Docteur TOUBEAU Jean-François (UMONS) 
Professeur CHATELAIN Philippe (UCLouvain) 
Professeur VANDEVELDE Lieven (Ugent)
Professeur CUFFE Paul (University College Dublin)

Pay attention: the public defense of Thuy-Hai Nguyen will also take place in the form of a videoconference.