Toronto Hydro is working with Ryerson researchers to push the limits of power quality

On May 31, CUE Postdoctoral Research Fellow Dr. Omid Alizadeh gave a riveting address (opens in new window)  about the work he has done with Toronto Hydro on enhancing power quality within the grid, especially for customers with sensitive equipment, such as hospitals and manufacturing facilities. CUE Academic Director Dr. Bala Venkatesh and CUE Honorary Fellow Gary Thompson of Toronto Hydro introduced Alizadeh’s presentation, commending him on his research.

“We are privileged to have an ongoing collaborative relationship with Ryerson,” Thompson said. “The Centre for Urban Energy has a number of highly qualified personnel, and we’ve been very happy to work with Dr. Omid Alizadeh on some very interesting projects.”

In his presentation, titled “Above and beyond: Enhancing power quality within Toronto Hydro’s grid”, Alizadeh highlighted that enhancing power quality is important because we want to maintain high productivity in our industries.

The definition of power quality — or more specifically, a power quality disturbance — is any change in the power (voltage, current or frequency) that interferes with normal operation of electrical equipment.

“North American utilities, including Toronto Hydro, are currently providing their customers with the latest standards of power quality and power reliability,” he said. “However, due to the modernization of electricity customers, as they acquire more advanced electronics in their systems, they become more and more sensitive to power quality issues and power quality incidents.”

They can benefit further from more enhanced power quality in the system, and that is the motivation behind his work, he explained.

Alizadeh spoke about the distinction between power interruption issues. According to one of the most commonly used definitions, if power provided to customers is interrupted for five minutes or less, it is classified as a power quality issue. When there is an interruption for longer than five minutes, it falls into the category of power reliability. The most common power quality incidents are voltage sags and momentary interruptions.

He then presented the potential solutions for enhancing power quality and described the outcomes of a case study to mitigate power interruptions for a large sensitive customer of Toronto Hydro by utilizing a power conditioner based on battery energy storage systems.

There was a question and answer period with the audience following the presentation.