Alliander and Radboud University
By better connecting education, research and the daily practice, energy network company Alliander and Radboud University aim to contribute to the energy transition. The transition to more sustainable energy use calls for strategic cooperation.
'Our collaboration enables students to make an impact now and in the future on a major societal and technological challenge: the energy transition.'
Rinke van de Rhee, Director Business Digitalisering and ITa. i., Alliander
'By working together, we want to make an additional contribution to the energy transition with our education and research.'
Daniel Wigboldus, head of the executive board of Radboud University
News
Alliander and Radboud University collaborate on energy transition
'It is about fundamental questions to make the world a better place, which requires a lot of knowledge and experience, both scientific insight and entrepreneurship.' More
‘Avoiding power grid congestion is like solving a super Sudoku’
The power grid is busy. Data scientists from Radboud University are helping Alliander predict and handle peaks as well as possible. More
Themes
We work together in four project teams. Would you like to know more or participate? Then please get in touch with the contacts at Alliander or Radboud University listed with each project.
AI & Data Science
The data that Alliander has and is able to use is currently not giving them all the information they need to operate the energy grid as optimal as possible. Putting AI to work and doing data science on the available data can give Alliander more insights in the workings and capabilities of their grid. This can help them to faster and/or more adequately resolve (or even avoid) outages due to extreme scenarios or maintenance.
Cyber security
This collaboration theme focuses on two different aspects of cyber security, namely: the digital security of systems itself and human behaviour leading to security issues. Barry Pouwels (Alliander) is in the lead of both, working together with two faculties: Faculty of Science with theme lead Erik Poll (RU) and Faculty of Social Sciences (Wolter Pieters). See below for the topics they are working on.
Physical modelling
This theme is about physical modelling of the energy grid. The goal is to better understand the phenomena that occur, as well as their effects on the physical condition of the assets in the grid such as cables and transformers. This enables Alliander maximize the transport of energy to customers while ensuring that het grid stays safe and reliable.
Statistics
The use of statistics can be very useful to optimally use the current grid capacity to solve the problem the full energy grid in the Netherlands. The current, but also slightly old, calculation rules which are used to determine the capacity of the energy grid, and consequently, the number of connections or size of connections to the grid that are allowed are very conservative and not perfectly adjusted to the new energy market. Energy grid operators make use of worst case scenarios to make the energy grid trust worthy, but adding probabilities to worst case scenarios can create a more optimal use of the energy grid. See below about specific research projects.
Contact
Want to know more about the strategic cooperation between Radboud University and Alliander? Please contact Jon Feenstra or Iris van Veghel from Research & Impact, Radboud University.