Mentoring

Second Mentoring by CEA Cadarache

The second mentoring visit took place between 2nd until 4th of February 2021. Due to Covid-19 travel restrictions, the second mentoring visit was held online.

The team of CEA was composed of the following members:

  • Dr Bruno Robisson, Atomic Energy and Alternative Energies Commission, CEA
  • Alexandre Mignonac, Group Manager Utility Scale Solar Plants and Storage Systems (CEA)

The team of MCAST who participated in the monitoring session was composed of the following members

  • Dr Brian Azzopardi 
  • Dr Somesh Bhattacharya 
  • Dr Vibhu Jately 
  • Renata Sadula 

The session was focused on the following three major topics : 

  • Topic 1 – Discussion on the charging infrastructure available at CEA which promotes self-consumption from PVs. 
  • Topic 2 – Endeavours for joint publications on some common topics such as drive data, an initiative by Brian. 
  • Topic 3 – Demand response approaches used by CEA for smart charging. 

During the 2nd Mentoring visit, Dr Bruno Robisson gave a lecture on Flexibility of electric vehicles (EV) Charging. The lecture contained the following:

  • description of flexibility levers can be activated thanks to EV, for different contexts of use of these vehicles: fleet of utility vehicles, private vehicles charging at home, in business or on public charging stations.
  • Analysis of actors intervene in the management of these flexibilities and, for certain cases,
  • value created by these flexibilities
  • technologies to be implemented. 

First Mentoring by AIT Austria

The first mentoring visit took place between 7th until 10th of January 2020. The team of AIT visited MCAST aiming to help MCAST academics, staff, early stage researchers as well as other interested researchers from Malta to grow.

The team of AIT was composed of the following members:

  • Dr Matthias Prandtstetter, Senior Scientist / Thematic Coordinator, Austrian Institute of Technology (AIT)
  • Dr Wolfgang Ponweiser, Senior Research Engineer, Austrian Institute of Technology (AIT)
  • Dr Bin Hu, Scientist, Austrian Institute of Technology (AIT)

The team of MCAST who participated in the monitoring session was composed of the following members:

  • Dr Brian Azzopardi 
  • Dr Somesh Bhattacharya 
  • Dr Vibhu Jately 
  • Stefan Azzopardi 
  • Steve Zerafa 
  • Renata Sadula 
  • Jeremy Farrugia

The main aims of the 1st Mentoring session were:

  • to share and exchange experiences with members of MCAST, especially the Master and PhD students,
  • to discuss ongoing research topics,
  • elaborate possible collaborations and provide scientific advice.

The session was focused on the following three major topics : 

  • Topic 1 – Vehicle to Grid: A potential V2G concept involves installing the corresponding infrastructure on MCAST parking lots so that electric vehicles (EVs) are connected once employees of MCAST arrive at the campus with their cars and start their working day. The general goal of this approach is to balance the voltage spikes due to energy consumption. The EVs can act as buffers in the grid when power is needed most during the working day. Flexibility is a major  
  • Topic 2 – Mobility data gathering for drive cycle analysis: For understanding the typical drive behaviour, mobility data need to be collected using GPS devices. Data will contain trip the GPS trace and the time of the trip. Although most of the recorded trips will be based on internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles, the energy consumption of EVs can be calculated by analysing the GPS trace.
  • Topic 3 – Smart survey app: Extending from private cars, it is beneficial to understand the general travelling behaviour of people in Malta. The smart survey app developed by AIT is multimodal and tracks people using their smartphones. The transport mode (walking, cycling, car, bus) can be automatically detected by using the speed and accelerometer. This way the overall travel demand can be captured and not only the usage of private cars. 

During the 1st Mentoring visit, Dr Bin Hu gave a lecture on Electric Mobility – Concepts and Methods​ (8th Jan 2020). The lecture contained topics on best practice examples of electric mobility projects in Austria and operations research methods to plan e-car sharing systems. Seven MCAST members attended the lecture.