PhD position in Modelling Flexible Future Power Systems

The research group Electrical Energy Technologies and Applications (ELECTA) of KU Leuven offers a PhD position in collaboration with the Joint Research Centre (JRC) of the European Commission. The PhD student will spend 2 years at JRC, located in Ispra (Italy), and 2 years at KU Leuven.

JRC is part of the European Commission and is considered as one of Europe's leading research campuses with many laboratories and unique research infrastructures. JRC supports EU policies with independent scientific evidence throughout the whole policy cycle and its aim is to develop innovative tools that are useful to policy makers.

KU Leuven boasts a rich tradition of education and research that dates back six centuries. The university’s basic research orientation has always been and will remain fundamental research. At the same time, the university remains vigilantly open to contemporary cultural, economic and industrial realities, as well as to the community’s needs and expectations. KU Leuven is currently by far the largest university in Belgium in terms of research funding and expenditure. KU Leuven conducts fundamental and applied research in all academic disciplines with a clear international orientation. In the Times Higher Education ranking KU Leuven is ranked as the 12th European university, while in the Reuters Top 100 of the World’s most innovative institutions, KU Leuven is listed as the first European university. The ELECTA research group of the Department of Electrical Engineering (ESAT) of KU Leuven performs research on aspects of generation, transmission, distribution and rational use of electrical energy. Topics covered are smart grids, reliable power systems with high penetration of renewable energy sources, HVDC and LVDC, energy markets, integration of renewable energy sources on transmission and distribution. Seven professors lead the group. They manage the research assisted by a team of senior researchers, post-doctoral researchers and about 50 PhD students. ELECTA is also a founding member of EnergyVille which is an association of the Flemish research institutes KU Leuven, VITO, imec and University of Hasselt in the field of sustainable energy and intelligent energy systems. EnergyVille brings research, development, training and industrial innovation together under one name, in close cooperation with local, regional and international partners. EnergyVille strives to become one of the top five European institutes in innovative energy research. For that reason, the centre was embedded in big national and international networks from the start.

Project

The PhD project will be on one of the three topics in line with our research roadmap on modelling the flexible future power systems, in particular, 

(1) Estimation of the flexibility potential of e-truck charging and impact on the energy system development: This PhD project focuses on evaluating the flexibility potential of e-truck charging and its impact on energy system development. With the road transportation sector contributing significantly to greenhouse gas emissions, truck electrification is crucial. The project aims to address the challenges posed by the increased electricity demand and the need for innovative control systems and smart design choices for integrating large-scale charging technologies. This includes the integration of local solar production, battery storage, and multi-level power charging systems, considering existing power infrastructure and potential bottlenecks. The project will explore efficient energy-aware ride planning and energy management of local assets, which are currently underdeveloped in the sector. It will investigate the flexibility in shifting driving patterns, charge session planning based on electricity prices, and local energy availability. The goal is to evaluate the flexibility potential in "time" (demand/power shift) and "space" (location/ride shift) for selected use cases in Europe, estimate the optimal deployment of charging assets, and assess the impact on energy system planning during the transition to electrified truck transport.  

(3) Federated learning and other privacy-enhancing technologies for smart grid applications: Within smart grid applications, much of the data is distributed among different stakeholders, some of which are residential citizens. Think about the use of flexibility from smart charging of electric vehicles for solving grid congestion issues or to offer flexibility services on a wholesale market. This doctoral research focuses on how such distributed data can be used in a way that citizens’ privacy is ensured, and that the data remains local with controlled access for that application only, so that it does not have to be centralised. A first element that will be investigated is how federated learning techniques can be deployed on smart meter data relevant to flexibility services. Federated learning allows to learn from different personal datasets, without sharing these: only machine learning model parameters are being exchanged. As such it is also privacy-enhancing. A second privacy-enhancing technique could be based on multiparty computation, which belongs to the group of COED (computations over encrypted data): only encrypted data is exchanged (ensuring private data remains private), while still computations can be performed, which eventually decrypt, for example, the total flexibility of a group of energy households. Finally, other privacy-enhancing techniques, such as secret sharing or homomorphic encryption (which also belongs to COED) can be considered for flexibility management. The student can especially focus on how to verify that local consumers contributed their flexibility to the grid, without revealing privacy-relevant data about this flexibility itself. Finally, linking these privacy-enhancing techniques to energy data spaces is a related research challenge as well.

(3) Analysing the effects of the offshore market design on system reliability and stability: The PhD project focuses on the development of offshore wind energy hubs, such as the Princess Elizabeth Island in Belgium, which are crucial for achieving the European Union's energy and climate targets. The project aims to analyse the impact of different offshore market designs (home market, offshore bidding zones) and their implementation (single zone, multi-zone, nodal clearing) on the stability of the power system and reserve requirements across various countries. The key objectives include developing optimization models to assess the behaviour of onshore and offshore transmission systems during large-scale outages, considering different initial conditions based on the chosen market design. It also involves incorporating technical constraints of generation, transmission, and storage equipment, especially HVDC technology, to evaluate their impact on system stability through cross-border ancillary services for fast frequency and frequency containment support. Additionally, detailed models will be developed to analyse system stability under various operating conditions. The project will assess how market design and implementation choices affect dimensioning incidents in different synchronous areas in Europe (GB, Nordic, continental Europe) and determine the scheduling of transmission assets to ensure sufficient headroom for cross-border ancillary services. The PhD candidate will enhance existing optimization models developed by the research group, which represent HVDC systems and grids in the context of reserve dimensioning, HVDC converter scheduling considering N-1 contingencies, and cross-border frequency services for frequency containment and fast frequency response.

Profile

• You have a master’s degree in electrical engineering, computer science or applied mathematics from a reputable institution, and at least the grade of distinction. (You can also apply if you are currently in your last year of study and will obtain your degree in the summer.)
• Good programming skills are required, knowledge of Python and/or Julia is a big plus.
• You are a team player and interested to work in a team with experts studying different aspects power systems
• You have the ambition to publish your work in top scientific journals in the field and present your work in international conferences.
• You should be willing to occasionally travel in the framework of your PhD.
• You are willing to contribute to teaching activities for a limited number of hours
• You are able to communicate fluently in English, both orally and in writing. Please consult the language requirements for Arenberg Doctoral School: https://set.kuleuven.be/phd/applicants/languagerequirements   

Offer

• Multiple benefits (health insurance, access to university infrastructure and sports facilities, etc.).
• Guidance from experienced faculty, who will teach you the fundamentals of applied, academic research using different research methodologies. 
• Training on research methodologies and soft skills through access to internal and external courses.
• The opportunity to develop a professional network within academia and industry.
• The opportunity to work in an ambitious and reputable team that encourages personal growth, creativity and taking responsibility.
• The opportunity to gain experience in the role of project management, after a sense of organizational skills have been demonstrated. 
• Preferred starting date is from September 2025. 
• During your PhD research, you follow the doctoral program of the KU Leuven.
• You regularly participate in workshops and international conferences.
• The CDP PhD project will have a total duration of 4 years where the PhD candidate is expected to spend 24 months at the  JRC ant 24 months at KU Leuven. For the period spent at the JRC, the student will be employed by a Grantholder 20 Contract in accordance with the Grantholder rules and the applicable Vademecum: https://ec.europa.eu/jrc/en/working-with-us/jobs/temporary-positions/grantholders/contract-and-working-conditions

Eligibility criteria

Candidates should, prior to the start of the employment contract with the JRC:

• have the nationality of a Member State of the EU or a country associated to the Research Framework Programmes or being resident in a EU Member State since at least five years and
• be admitted to the PhD programme in Engineering Sciences of the Arenberg Doctoral School, please consult https://set.kuleuven.be/phd for details before application.

Selection 

• The selection will be done in two stages: one at the KU Leuven and a second one at the JRC. The selection is based on CVs and interviews by the HEI in the first stage and the JRC in a second stage.

EnergyVille
Electa Research Group

Interested?

For more information please contact prof. dr. Geert Deconinck ([email protected]), prof. dr. Johan Driesen ([email protected]) and prof. dr. Hakan Ergun at KU Leuven ([email protected]), and mr. Davide Currò ([email protected]) and dr. Antonio De Paola ([email protected]) at JRC.

Please include a short motivation on the PhD topic that you chose to apply for to your application file.

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