Paper on the Role of Microgrids winner of ICER Distinguished Scholar Awards
On 27 May 2015 the winners of the ICER Distinguished Scholar Awards were announced at the 6th World Forum on Energy Regulation (WFER VI) in Istanbul, Turkey. These awards by the International Confederation of Energy Regulators (ICER) honour important contributions made to enhancing electricity and gas regulation around the world. Winners of the Impact on Developing Countries category were Katelijn Van Hende, Lecturer, and Carmen Wouters, PhD candidate, both from the School of Energy Resources, University College London, Australia with the paper “The Role of Microgrids within Future Regional Electricity Markets”.
The study describes how microgrids fit into our current and future energy system and what their benefits are within these roles. The research comes to the conclusion that microgrids will fulfil a dual role within regionally integrated markets. They can guarantee supply security and increase flexibility in case of disruptions due to their islanding capability, but can at the same time be interconnected to and participate in the macro-grid interconnected system. Furthermore, microgrids can be tailored to specific customer needs as well as to local environments. Governments should therefore pay more attention to the importance of microgrid connections to the distribution network and the central energy system and market as a whole and allow for the integration of the microgrid concept into the policy and legal framework.
