Alexandros Paspatis and Alkistis Kontou, researchers at the National Technical University of Athens, visited the RE-EMPOWERED project colleagues at IIT BBS in February. This was the second EU-India Knowledge Exchange trip of the project, with colleagues of the two institutions working together on the control and stability aspects of the RE-EMPOWERED demos. Particularly, the following activities took place during the two-week visit:
- A technical visit to the Keonjhar demo site took place, in which, colleagues from CMERI and VNIT also participated. In the technical visit, an inspection of the existing microgrid installation was performed, while discussions with the citizens of the village also took place.
- The researchers from NTUA participated in discussions with the colleagues from IIT BBS and the contractor developing the new installations at the Keonjhar demo site, where they concluded regarding the synchronization and the power sharing capabilities between the old and the new microgrid system.
- Alexandros and Alkistis presented their research work in a seminar organized by the local IEEE PELS Student Chapter, while a second seminar was also organized in collaboration with the ERIGrid 2.0 H2020 project. In the first seminar, presentations on stability analysis of inverter-based microgrids and HIL applications were given, while in the second one the developments of ERIGrid 2.0 project were presented as well as the Transnational Access (TA) program that gives the opportunity to students from India to apply for access in smart grid laboratories in Europe.
- Collaboration activities also focused on the various research topics that both groups are active at, while plans for common publications were set up.
Apart from the technical part, multiple social events also took place, e.g., lunches and dinners, while day trips were also organized for Alexandros and Alkistis to explore the Odisha region.
Alexandros and Alkistis said: “We would like to thank Dr. Karanki and his research group for hosting us for 2 weeks at Bhubaneswar. We had the unique chance to experience the Indian hospitality, while also working towards the advancements of our project’s objectives. We very much look forward to visiting again India and IIT BBS.”
