Power and Energy Systems

About Domain

INESC TEC’s main actor in the energy field is the Centre for Power and Energy Systems (CPES), which falls within the Cluster Energy Systems. We at CPES are internationally recognised for our expertise in the integration of renewable energy in power systems, distributed generation, storage, smart grids and areas traditionally associated with the planning and operation of power systems. The high level of expertise developed has allowed our experts at CPES to take on key roles in important EU projects as part of the successive framework programmes that led to notable scientific and technical advances with considerable impact on industry. This has led to contracts for development and consultancy with companies manufacturing equipment and with generation, transmission and distribution companies, regulators, government agencies and investors in Europe, South America, the United States of America and Africa. At CPES, we address the following main research areas: Decision Making, Optimisation and Computational Intelligence, Forecasting, Static and Dynamic analysis of Energy Grids, Reliability, Power Electronics.

Flagship Projects

BioShoes4All

InterConnect

The underlying concept of InterConnect is the Semantic Interoperability, which is the ability that digital systems have to exchange data with unambiguous, shared and agreed meaning, a steppingstone for the implementation of the Digital Single Market and enablement of cross domain data spaces. This is supported via ontologies, such as SAREF, and knowledge exchange mechanisms, allowing different providers and companies to offer competitive and cost-effective solutions whilst avoiding lock-ins or closed vertical technology implementations. The main innovation of the project is to deploy the concept of semantic interoperability into practice on a large scale, validating acceptance by key market stakeholders from domains for energy and smart buildings. To fulfil the objective of deploying semantic interoperability on a large scale, the first step was to define a reference architecture for the project, that resulted from a detailed state-of-the-art analysis of relevant IoT related reference architectures. The cross-domain semantic interoperability is the transversal and core innovation of the project upon which all the developments concerning the semantic interoperability are made, interpreted by the developed Semantic Interoperability Framework (SIF). Different semantic components are being used to support energy and non-energy services to be demonstrated in seven different pilots in Portugal, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, Italy, and Greece. InterConnect is aligned and actively contributes to EC initiatives, promoting the SIF to foster semantic interoperability as the needed game changer to unlock cross-domain data spaces. This work has been supported in several initiatives, with the architectural discussions that will lead to the integration within the European Data Spaces or GAIA-X initiative, particularly in terms of data sovereignty, creation of semantic knowledge capabilities in those associations and leveraging from the learned lessons from manufacturers associations and alliances in the Interconnect large scale pilots.

Interoperable Solutions Connecting Smart Homes, Buildings and Grids

See more projects

Selected Publications

Security-Constrained Optimal Power Flow via Cross-Entropy Method

Carvalho, LD;Leite da Silva, AML;Miranda, V;

2018

IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER SYSTEMS

Privacy-Preserving Distributed Learning for Renewable Energy Forecasting

Goncalves, C;Bessa, RJ;Pinson, P;

2021

IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON SUSTAINABLE ENERGY

Trading Small Prosumers Flexibility in the Energy and Tertiary Reserve Markets

Iria, JP;Soares, FJ;Matos, MA;

2019

IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON SMART GRID

Fault-ride-through strategies for grid-tied and grid-forming smart-transformers suited for islanding and interconnected operation

Rodrigues, J;Moreira, C;Lopes, JP;

2020

ELECTRIC POWER SYSTEMS RESEARCH

See more publications

Team Members

Team Leaders

Manuel Matos

I was born in Porto (Portugal) in 8 April 1955, graduated in Electrical Engineering in the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Porto - FEUP (1977), and completed my PhD in Power Systems in 1988, also from the University of Porto. In November 1996 I got the aggregation title from the University of Porto. In 1978, I joined the Department of Electrical Engineering of FEUP, where I am Full Professor since 2000. In the period 1990-98, I was also the Director of the Library of FEUP. In the period 2001-08, I was the director of the MSc program on Information Management, and I was the director of the PhD program in Sustainable Energy Systems, integrated in the MIT-Portugal program. I lectured several courses in graduation, MSc and PhD courses in Electrical Engineering and Power Systems and supervised the research activities of many graduation, MSc and PhD students. I also collaborated with the Management School of the University of Porto, lecturing MSc courses on Decision-Aid. I was a member of the Senate of the University of Porto since October 2009 until 2017. I retired from FEUP in May 2022.

In 1985 I joined INESC (now INESC TEC). Since 1996 I coordinate the Centre for Power and Energy Systems of INESC TEC, leading 100+ researchers (including 30+ PhD). I was the President of the Scientific Council of INESC TEC since 2001 until 2022. I have been involved in several national, EU and international RTD projects and in development contracts and consultancy for utilities, TSO, DSO, industrial partners, government agencies and for the Regulatory Authority for the Energy Services of Portugal. In particular, I was the responsible for the INESC TEC research team in the EU financed projects “CARE” (Advanced Control Advice for power systems with large-scale integration of Renewable Energy sources), “MORE CARE” (More Advanced Control Advice for Secure Operation of Isolated Power Systems with Increased Renewable Energy Penetration and Storage) and “ANEMOS.PLUS” (Advanced Tools for the Management of Electricity Grids with Large-Scale Wind Generation). I was the Principal Investigator of project “SusCity” (Urban data driven models for creative and resourceful urban transitions), financed by FCT (MPP-Testbed).

I also coordinated the research teams of the contracts “CCR” (Load Profiling and Distribution Network Characterization), with EDP Distribution (the Portuguese DSO), Study on the Impact of Large Renewable Deployment on European Electricity Higher Voltage Systems (JRC-Institute for Energy), “RESERVES” (Mid and Long Term Evaluation of the adequacy of Operational Reserve levels in the Iberian Electric Power Systems), with the TSO of Portugal (REN) and Spain (REE), “RECEP” (Development and testing of methodologies to determine the hosting capacity in the nodes of the National Grid of Portugal) (REN), “ReservaProb” (Software Module for helping setting the operational reserve of the National Electric System) (REN) and “MORA” (Long-term adequacy evaluation of reserves in a multi-area context) (REN). I was also involved in consultancy actions regarding the design of public tenders, namely the call for tenders for new wind power generation in Portugal mainland in 2006)

My research interests include classic and fuzzy modeling of power systems, reliability and optimization and decision-aid, with application to renewables’ integration, electric vehicles’ deployment and smart grids. I was involved in the organization of the international conferences PMAPS’2000, IEEE PPT’2001, ISAP’2015 and EEM’2016. I am a member of the Editorial board of EPSR (Top Reviewer in 2010) and of Int J of Multicriteria Decision Making. I am a senior member of IEEE.

Ricardo Jorge Bessa

Ricardo Bessa was born in 1983 in Viseu, and received his Licenciado (5-years) degree from the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Porto, Portugal (FEUP) in 2006 in Electrical and Computer Engineering. In 2008, he received the M.Sc. degree in Data Analysis and Decision Support Systems from the Faculty of Economics of the University of Porto (FEP). He obtained his Ph.D. degree in the Doctoral Program in Sustainable Energy Systems (MIT Portugal) at FEUP in 2013. Currently, he is Coordinator of the Center for Power and Energy Systems at INESC TEC. He worked on several international projects such as the European Projects FP6 ANEMOS.plus, FP7 SuSTAINABLE, FP7 evolvDSO, Horizon 2020 UPGRID, Horizon 2020 InteGrid, H2020 Smart4RES, H2020 InterConnect, HORIZON ENERSHARE, and an international collaboration with Argonne National Laboratory for the U.S. Department of Energy. At the national level, he participated in the development of renewable energy forecasting systems and consultant services about energy storage and AI. Associate Editor of IEEE Transactions on Sustainable Energy and received the ESIG Excellence Award in 2022. He is co-authors of more than 60 journal papers and 120 conference papers, and IEEE Senior Member.