Institutes from Belgium, Finland, Luxembourg and the USA join the Association of European Distributed Energy Resources Laboratories – DERlab e.V.

Tthe Association of European Distributed Energy Resources Laboratories (DERlab e.V.) has accepted four new members at its general assembly in Roskilde, Denmark. DERlab e. V. was founded in 2008 as an non-profit association of independent world-class laboratories for the grid-integration of decentralised power generation. Since then, the twelve members have, for example, prepared an international white paper for the standardisation of grid inverters and developed interconnection requirements for decentralised energy resources (DER) as well as testing procedures for power system services.“DERlab aims to cluster the best European DER laboratories from each EU member state and is now starting to involve institutes from other continents as well”, says Dr. Philipp Strauss, the immediate past spokesperson of DERlab´s board. “The new members will bring all their valuable technical expertise to the network”. While VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland provides multifunctional environments for researching the technical solutions and products for distributed energy systems, the Interdisciplinary Centre for Reliability, Security and Trust at the University of Luxembourg will bring expertise in the field of reliability and security of information and communication technology, especially addressing vulnerability of electricity networks. The new member from Belgium is K.U. Leuven for the new knowledge institute EnergyVille, that was recently founded by K.U. Leuven and Vito for innovative research in green energy and energy technology.The fourth new member is Sandia National Laboratories from the USA. It is DERlab´s first non-European member institute and conducts research to integrate emerging energy technologies into new and existing electricity infrastructures. “It is planned to further intensify the international co-operation under the umbrella of ISGAN, the International Smart Grid Action Network that was recently founded. DERlab is ready to support and to join a new international research facility network that is under preparation at the IEA”, announces Philipp Strauss.The standardisation of the grid properties of distributed generators, storage units and controllable loads is an urgent matter, because such units are expected to deliver ancillary system services for electricity grids in the near future. These network services have to be delivered in a co-ordinated way so that they are able to take over tasks that today are mainly performed by bulk power plants. DERlab e.V. will help to accelerate this harmonisation process and to develop appropriate test procedures that can be applied to guarantee the necessary quality assurance.According to DERlab’s statutes, today a new Spokesperson of the Board was elected in the third year after its foundation. Philipp Strauss handed over the reins to Roland Bründlinger from AIT. Bründlinger said that he is planning to further develop DERlab so that it can support the transition of power systems to the future “Smart Grid”. “The Smart Grid will be able to integrate millions of renewable and distributed energy sources into our electricity networks.” Further members of the board are Maria-Luciana Rizzi (RSE), Dr. Philipp Strauss (IWES), Peter Vaessen (KEMA) and Prof. Graeme Burt (University of Strathclyde). 30.03.2011, DERlab e.V