Nester R&D Researcher Wins 2015 ABB / ISEL Prize
The NESTER R&D researcher, João Esteves, won the 2015 ABB (Asea Brown Boveri) / ISEL prize, thanks to the score of 20 marks (out of a maximum of 20) for his master’s degree thesis on “Stochastic optimization for the operation of concentrating solar power plants considering uncertainty and risk”.
The 2015 ABB / ISEL prize is awarded each year to the graduate who obtained the highest mark (never lower than 16 out of 20) for the final dissertation of the master’s degree course on the topic of renewable energy (including smart-grids, industrial automation, automatic control, robotics, home automation, drives / variable speed devices and power transformers).
The final master’s degree dissertation by João Esteves addresses the problem of short-term planning in systems to harness solar energy at concentrating solar power (CSP) plants, proposing a new stochastic optimization methodology based on mixed integer linear programming considering risk management. The goal is to maximize the expected profit from the operation of such plants operating in a market environment. It also addresses the use of energy storage systems to increase the efficiency of these plants and includes the development and implementation of an algorithm to reduce scenarios, not only to mitigate scenario redundancy but also to improve the computational performance of the proposed methodology.