The Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee, is part of an Indo-US consortium working on a mega project of a smart energy distribution system. This $75 million, five-year project called the US-India collaboration for smart distribution system with storage (UI-ASSIST) is part of the Indo-US Joint Clean Energy Research and Development Center (JCERDC) and will work towards addressing pertinent issues related to the adoption and deployment of smart grids including storage in the distribution network. One of the most important aspects of this project is to bridge the gap between smart grid, storage and renewable energy research in order to facilitate its subsequent adoption. Under this project, IIT Roorkee has been awarded a grant of Rs 417.52 lakh.
This consortium, IIT Roorkee said, will bring in experts from academia and industry to collectively pave way to an advanced distribution system that allows increased use of distributed energy resources like microgrids and energy storage. The group will conduct research and deploy new smart grid and energy storage technologies, help modernise grids, make them smarter, and increase their resilience and reliability. “The consortium will be divided into the Indian Core team and the US Core team.
The Indian team comprises of IIT Kanpur, IIT Roorkee, IIT Delhi, IIT Madras, IIT Bhubaneswar and TERI, Delhi. The US team comprises of Washington State University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Texas A&M University.
The prototype hybrid AC/DC microgrid test bed will be developed at IIT Roorkee. The Indian Rural Distribution pilot project will be tested in two villages near Kanpur and implemented and monitored by IIT Kanpur; the India Semi-Urban distribution pilot project will also be deployed at IIT Kanpur campus.
