Special Issues open for submissions in IET Renewable Power Generation

I am delighted to share with you our Special Issues that are open for submissions now!

IET Renewable Power Generation has always run successful, high-impact Special Issues in which only papers of the highest quality that make a significant contribution to the renewables field are published.

Please browse our current Special Issues open for submission below, if you have any questions please do not hesitate to contact us at [email protected].

Distributed Biomass Conversion for Energy: Process Intensification and Economics

The United Nations adopted 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) to improve the quality of life for all. Several SDGs challenge industry to produce more affordable and cleaner energy (Goal 7), build small scale industrial enterprises and domestic technologies (Goal 9), improve the management and efficient use of natural resources (Goal 12), and integrate climate change measures into national strategies (Goal 13). Clean cooking fuel remains scarce in regions (3 billion people rely on polluting cooking systems) and 800 million people have no electricity. The energy density of renewable resources is low (compared to petroleum), which makes transporting bio-feedstocks to centralized stations prohibitively expensive. Process intensification (PI) and distributed manufacture are strategies to convert biomass to electricity, thermo-processing of lignocelluloscis, and waste natural gas to liquid fuels (GTL). The latter relates to the World Bank's Global Gas Flaring Initiative to reduce routine flaring by 2030. Part of the solution to producing cleaner energy is building mobile refineries to treat biomass. PI reduces the size of equipment while maintaining productivity by maximizing the thermal, electrical, mechanical, and catalytic driving forces. These technologies must be coupled with mass manufacturing (numbering up economies rather than scale up) to achieve economic parity with centralized power facilities. 

With Guest Editors Gregory Patience and Daria C. Boffito, submissions must be made through ScholarOne by 19 April 2021. More information on this special issue and submitting an article can be found here.

Future of Smart Grid and Renewable Energy

Statistics show that the current level of renewable power generation is insufficient to meet the energy needs of our ever-increasing population. As a result, new mechanisms are needed to generate and utilise renewable energy in a more efficient manner: a smart grid is one such mechanism. Smart grids are a self-sufficient electricity network system based on digital automation technology to allow for the easier integration of monitoring, control, and analysis methods. Such a system can target the production of quality sustainable, reliable and safe electricity for all, while quickly finding the solutions to any problems that arise and reducing the workforce necessary to deal with these problems. It is capable of providing electrical power from multiple and widely distributed sources, such as wind turbines, solar power systems, and perhaps even plug-in hybrid electric vehicles. The smart grid uses energy in a smarter way, allowing for the entire electricity-based network, from producers to consumers, to be connected more effectively. While conventional power grids consist of huge power plants that demand equally huge infrastructure for a creating a centralised system, a smart grid follows a decentralised system where the small power producers of renewable energy can be integrated by adopting smarter transmission and distribution strategies. Moreover, since the sources of renewable energy change periodically based on the demand, adapting a smart grid environment to handle the power is considered a more effective option. Making use of these smart grid technologies may also improve the detection of faults, providing a continuous and reliable electricity solution. Various researches are being conducted around the world to explore and find the possibilities for a complete transformation of renewable energy into a smart grid. This special issue of IET Renewable Power Generation is focused on inviting research ideas, articles and experimental evaluations related to ‘Future of Smart Grid and Renewable Energy’ for learning, analysing and predicting the various sources of renewable energy in a smart grid environment.

With Guest Editors Sujatha Krishnamoorthy, Seifedine Kadry, Gunasekaran Manogaran and Ruben Gonzalez Crespo, submissions must be made through ScholarOne by 30 July 2021. More information on this special issue and submitting an article can be found here.

Low-Carbon Operation and Marketing of the Distribution System

Humanity is now in a dilemma between “less carbon” and “more energy”. The accelerated deployment of low-carbon technologies, such as distributed energy resources (DERs), electric vehicles, and energy storage, has been regarded as a promising direction towards a more sustainable and affordable power grid. In line with this trend, the traditionally passive energy consumers are now transitioning into energy prosumers, who can play the role as either a producer or a consumer. Prosumers are expected to play a proactive role in energy management. However, the current centralised operation mode requires information transparency without privacy; the centralised market paradigm provides limited choices and relies on massive computation and communication resources. Therefore, innovative operation methods and business models are in great need to unlock the flexibility of demand-side resources, such as transactive energy and energy sharing. The above changes also challenge current market-relevant technologies. The output of DERs is intermittent and volatile, making prosumers’ behaviors difficult to predict. This two-side uncertainty calls for advanced forecasting technology and more frequent actions in a finer timescale to balance real-time mismatched power. Moreover, the DERs belong to different stakeholders with conflicting interests, who may be unwilling to reveal their private information. Communication and control technologies concerning privacy protection need in-depth investigation. Development of groundbreaking operation and market design technologies is requisite to fully take advantage of DERs.

This special issue of IET Renewable Power Generation aims to provide a forum for researchers to present their original work with a strong methodological focus on the operation and marketing of distribution systems and relevant technologies, while remaining within the general scope of the journal.

With Guest Editors Yue Chen, Changhong Zhao, Wei Wei, Qiuwei Wu, Yunhe Hou, Hrvoje Pand?i?, Hamed Mohsenian-Rad and Yongjun Zhang, submissions must be made through ScholarOne by 2 August 2021. More information on this special issue and submitting an article can be found here. 

Enhancing Hosting Capability for Renewable Energy Generation in Active Distribution Networks

Modern power systems have been experiencing a significant transition from a one-way energy supply chain to a two-way energy system, which is featured by the deployment of renewable energy generations both centralized and distributed, advanced information and communications technologies (ICTs), and demand-side response (DR). The increasing integration of renewable energy generation into a low-voltage distribution network brings profound challenges to its secure and economic operation, including technical issues with protection placement and coordination, voltage and power violation, power quality, and energy loses. In order to enhance the accommodation capability for renewables in distribution networks, endeavors have been devoted to the research on virtual power plants, industrial/business park energy management, smart home energy management, as well as energy storage systems. Meanwhile, distributed energy resources both generation and storage resources are playing an increasing role in ancillary service provision for bulk power grids, particularly in frequency regulation. For instance, the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) has been exploring the potential of provision of contingency Frequency Control Ancillary Service (FCAS) through VPP demonstrations.

Given the above-mentioned background, this special issue solicits original and novel research on enhancing hosting capability for renewable energy generation in active distribution networks.

With Guest Editors Jiajia Yang, Z. Y. Dong, Fushuan Wen, Ramteen Sioshansi, Mohammad Reza Hesamzadeh, Qixin Chen and Yue Zhou, submissions must be made through ScholarOne by 2 August 2021. More information on this special issue and submitting an article can be found here.

Applications of Advanced Machine Learning and Big Data Techniques in Renewable Energy-based Power Grids

In recent years, due to the grid modernizations, high penetration of renewable energies, and using smart sensors in the main structure of the power grids, a large amount of data has been generated that can potentially lead to the complexity of the network. This can be a significant issue especially in contingencies conditions, post-natural disasters operation, and cyber/physical attacks which require fast and reliable data processing to preserve grid reliability and resiliency. Furthermore, in the normal condition, the reliability of the power grids is very important and it can be improved by using the large data of measurements during long term operation. Therefore, to address these challenges, advanced machine learning-based techniques, as well as big data techniques can provide new solutions to energy systems operation and control.

This Special Issue of IET Renewable Power Generation aims to investigate applications of advanced machine/deep learning and big data techniques in power and energy system operation, analysis, planning, cybersecurity, and control.

With Guest Editors Morteza Dabbaghjamanesh, Alireza Jolfaei, Abdollah Kavousi-Fard, Zhao Yang Dong, Tomislav Dragicevic and Tao Jin, submissions must be made through ScholarOne by 16 August 2021. More information on this special issue and submitting an article can be found here.

Applications of Artificial Intelligence in Renewable Energy Systems

Owing to the strong uncertainty and fluctuation of renewable energy generations, renewable energy systems are becoming more sophisticated. Traditional model-based methods will be difficult to address the analysis, scheduling and control problems of the future renewable energy systems. Artificial intelligence (AI), as a data-driven approach, can directly learn useful information from massive data to deal with complex nonlinear problems without making any assumptions and simplifications. The fields of AI, e.g., deep learning and reinforcement leaning (RL), has made great progress in recent years. Advanced AI approaches can promote the development of renewable energy systems. The application of intelligent techniques in renewable energy systems can achieve a substantial improvement in predicting the optimal solutions of design and scheduling variables. Regression techniques learn patterns from massive data, so they can be used to monitor and predict renewable energy generations. Additionally, advanced classification techniques can be applied to assess the security and stability of renewable energy-based power systems. RL techniques can provide operators with emergency control actions amid the uncertainties of renewable energy systems.

This special issue in IET Renewable Power Generation welcomes research papers related to the utilization of the state-of-the-art AI techniques in renewable energy systems.

With Guest Editors Weihao Hu, Qiuwei Wu, Amjad Anvari-Moghaddam, Junbo Zhao, Xiao Xu, Sayed Mohamed Abulanwar and Di Cao, submissions must be made through ScholarOne by 30 August 2021. More information on this special issue and submitting an article can be found here.

Models, Methods, and Platforms for Electromagnetic Transient Simulation of Modern Power Systems with High Penetration Power Electronic Integration

Modern power and energy systems are integrating more and more renewable energy sources, most of which are interfaced through power electronic converters. Incorporating sophisticated control and protections, these converter-interfaced devices introduce multi-scale dynamics to power systems, which challenge the system operation under normal and abnormal conditions. Especially, transient responses of the modern power system need to be understood, validated and evaluated. Thus, detailed models and high-performance transient simulations are highly demanded. The conflict between increasing system scales and high calculation accuracy and efficiency is becoming more obvious and there’s a clear resurgence of research interest in recent years. Novel models, numerical methods, and hardware, such as exponential integration algorithm and FPGA, have been proposed to improve the efficiency, accuracy, and numerical stability of transient simulations. This special issue of IET Renewable Power Generation provides an opportunity for researchers and practicing engineers to share their latest discoveries and best practices in these areas. The aim is to present a state-of-the-art collection of computer modelling and simulation methods for the transient simulation that accommodate the multiscale and stochastic nature of modern power systems.

With Guest Editors Ying Chen, Kai Strunz, Xiaoyu Wang, Liwei Wang, Keyou Wang, Peng Li, Jianzhong Xu, Shaowei Huang, Yue Xia, Jin Xu and Xiaopeng Fu, submissions must be made through ScholarOne by 13 September 2021. More information on this special issue and submitting an article can be found here.

Advanced Trends of Control Topologies for the Integrated PV Systems: Development, Challenges and Opportunities

Problems associated with fossil fuels consumption for electric power generation has created considerable attention in seeking alternative renewable energy systems. Photovoltaic (PV) systems are the technological symbol for a future sustainable energy supply system in many countries. A considerable amount of money is invested in research, development and demonstration, and several governments have set up substantial market introduction programs with industrial investment. However, PV electricity is also regarded as expensive when compared to conventional grid electricity. The main challenge in PV system research is to investigate the high-efficiency operation with advanced trends of control strategies. A typical PV system is composed of solar cells, an energy storage system, a power electronic converter and a control system. The solar PV system can be connected either to stand-alone loads or the utility grid. To improve the conversion efficiency and reduce the cost of energy production, a variety of PV system technologies have been developed over the past decades. These technologies have considered the materials and characteristics of the cells, their location, the current challenges associated with energy storage systems, current application challenges of power electronics in the control systems of solar PV moduls, and the target of operation under maximum power extraction strategy. The special issue of IET Renewable Power Generation welcomes research papers related to the high-efficiency operation of the integrated PV systems with advanced trends of control strategies. 

With Guest Editors Mohamed Gamal Hussien, Essam M. Rashad and Josep M. Guerrero, submissions must be made through ScholarOne by 30 November 2021. More information on this special issue and submitting an article can be found here.