Background and activities

Research area

I am a head of the "Electricity Markets and Energy Systems Planning"  (EMESP) research group at the Department of Electric Power Engineering, NTNU. I have performed research in various topics in power system economics, electricity demand flexibility, and smart grids. My research activities centre around the following aspects:

  • Power market analysis and hydropower scheduling
  • Power system balancing
  • Local flexibility markets and flexibility operation in smart systems

I am a senior member of IEEE and an active member of the International Energy Agency (IEA) Wind Task 25. It is an international forum formed for international cooperation and knowledge sharing between experts in the field. In 2021, I was promoted to join the International Smart Grid Action Network (ISGAN) to represent Norway as an expert in Flexibility Markets in Annex 9 – Aspects of market design for power system flexibility.

Background

  • Professor at the Dept. of Electric Power Engineering, NTNU (2022-now)

  • Head of EMESP research group (Sep. 2021-now)

  • Associate Professor at the Dept. of Electric Power Engineering, NTNU (2015-2022)

  • Scientific Advisor of SINTEF Energi (2015-now)

  • Research scientist at SINTEF Energi (2012-2015)

  • Dr.ing. (PhD) from the Dept. of Electric Power Engineering, NTNU (2012) with the title: "Integrated Power System Balancing in Northern Europe - Models and Case Studies."

Research activities

  • IntHydro, Project Leader, PhD supervisor (2020-now) - Intelligent dispatching and optimal operation of cascade hydropower plants based on big spatiotemporal data, IKTPLUSS Chinese-Norwegian Collaborative Projects on Digitalisation, funded by the Research Council of Norway (RCN). The project focuses on developing and demonstrating a new hydropower scheduling tool based on machine learning techniques. The tool optimises water resource management and multi-dispatch between hydropower and variable renewable energy sources. We established a fruitful collaboration with Hohai University, Smart Innovation Norway, and Chinese and Norwegian industry partners.
  • HONOR, WP Leader, Postdoc supervisor (2019-now)- Holistic flexibility market integration of cross-sectoral energy sources, funded by ERA-Net Smart Energy Systems with support from the European Union Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme, a collaborative project with Germany, Denmark and Sweden. The project aims to develop and evaluate a trans-regional flexibility market mechanism, integrating cross-sectoral energy flexibility at a community-wide level.
  • H2020 INVADE, WP Leader, NTNU coordinator, Postdoc supervisor (2017-2020) - Integrated electric vehicles and batteries to empower distributed and centralised storage in distribution grids, H2020 project, EU project funded by the European Commission. The project focuses on developing a flexibility management system using batteries that supports the distribution grid and electricity market while coping with grid limitations, uncertainty and variability with high penetration of renewable energy, electric vehicles and an increased number of diverse smart grid actors.
  • PRIBAS, Project partner & Scientific advisor, NTNU coordinator, PhD supervisor (2017-2021) - Pricing balancing services in the future Nordic power market, project partner and scientific advisor, Knowledge-building Project for Industry (KSP) project funded by RCN. The primary objective of this project was to design, develop and verify a modelling concept able to compute marginal prices for all physical electricity products in the Nordic power market, including power and different types of reserve capacity and reserve power.
  • FINE, Project partner, NTNU coordinator, PhD supervisor (2020-now) - Flexible integration of local energy communities into the Norwegian electricity distribution system KSP project funded by RCN. The project focuses on determining the opportunities and challenges in developing Local Energy Communities (LECs) for the Norwegian power system and investigating the implications of integrating LECS to the DSOs operational decisions.
  • DigEco, Project partner & Scientific Committee, PhD supervisor (2018-now) - Digital Economy, an internal project funded by NTNU's Digital Transformation Initiative. The project promotes the capabilities of digital technologies to support disruptive changes in health, energy and finance. In the energy sector, the focus is on promoting consumers/prosumers access to the electricity market (consumer-centric electricity market design).
  • PowerDig, Project partner, Postdoc supervisor (2021-now) - Digitalisation of short-term resource allocation in power markets (2021-now), KSP project funded by RCN. The project aims to explore and define a new market design, ensuring optimal short-run allocation of energy resources based on digitalisation capabilities.

I contributed to developing the Norwegian Centres for Environment-friendly Energy Research (FME). The objective of these centres is to carry out long-term research targeted towards renewable energy, energy efficiency, and social science aspects of energy research.

  • FME CINELDI- Centre for Intelligent Electricity Distribution (2016-now). FME Centre co-funded by RCN. I am a Task Leader of Task 5.4: value of flexibility within WP5: Flexible resources in the power system, and supervisor of a PhD candidate funded jointly by FME CINELDI  and FME ZEN.
  • FME ZEN-Zero Emission Neighbourhoods. FME Centre co-funded by RCN (2016-now). I am the supervisor of a PhD candidate funded jointly by FME CINELDI and FME ZEN.
  • FME NTRANS- Norwegian Centre for Energy Transition Strategies (2019-now)- FME Centre co-funded by RCN (2016-now). I am the Task leader in Research Area 3: The future energy market and supervisor of a PhD candidate.

During my career at SINTEF Energy Research, I was involved in multiple EU projects listed below:

  • EU FP7 TWENTIES- Transmission system operation with a large penetration of wind and other renewable electricity sources in electricity networks using innovative tools and integrated energy solutions, funded by the European Commission.
  • EU-IEE IRPWIND-Integrated Research Programme on Wind Energy,  funded by the European Commission and initiated as a part of the EERA joint programme on Wind Energy.
  • EU FP7 eHighway2050- Modular Development Plan of the Pan-European Transmission System 2050, funded by the European Commission.
 

PhD Candidates

Main supervisor for:

  • Sigurd Bjarghov: Consumer-centric Electricity Market Design integrating Peer-to-Peer and Flexibility Markets

  • Kasper Emil Thorvaldsen: Techno-economic models of energy flexible buildings in the future smart grid

  • Kersti Berg: Integration of Local Energy Communities into the Norwegian Electricity Distribution System

  • Mari Haugen: Advanced modelling techniques for power market with a large share of hydropower

  • Jinghao Wang: A New Hydropower Scheduling Tool Based on Machine Learning Techniques 

  • Luke Whittington: Short-term Energy System Integration in Neighbourhoods, Transport and Industry - Effects on Long-term System Design

Previous PhD candidates (main supervisor):

 

Co-supervisor for:

  • Güray Kara: Techno-economic optimisation for analysing consumer flexibility and related market structures

Previous PhD candidates (co-supervisor):

I had the privilege of mentoring two Postdoctoral researchers who were involved in the H2020 INVADE project:

  • Dr Venkatachalam Lakshmanan, who is now a Research Scientist at SINTEF Energy Research, Trondheim, Norway
  • Dr Jamshid Aghaei, who is now a Professor at LUT School of Energy Systems, Lappeenranta–Lahti University of Technology (LUT), Lappeenranta, Finland

I am currently mentoring Dr Dmytro Ivanko, a Postdoc within the ERA-Net HONOR project.

Courses

  • Responsible for the 5-year course "TET4185- Power Markets, Resources and Environment " (2015-)

  • Responsible for the specialisation course "ELK-15 Hydro Power Scheduling and Miscellaneous Topics on Electricity Markets" (2018-)

  • Participating in organising of the PhD course "ET8208 - Power Market Theory" (2017-)

  • Participating in organising the PhD course "ET8209 - Methods for Power Production Scheduling."

Scientific, academic and artistic work

A selection of recent journal publications, artistic productions, books, including book and report excerpts. See all publications in the database

2022

2021

2020

2019