INESC Porto researchers awarded in international conference

INESC Porto researchers awarded in international conference

Joel Soares and Pedro Almeida, researchers at INESC Porto’s Power Systems Unit (USE) and Ph.D. students of the MIT|Portugal Programme, were the winners, together with Miguel Moreira da Silva (also Ph.D. student of the MIT|Portugal Programme), of best presentation award at an international conference, organised by the Chamber of Commerce of Angra do Heroísmo, Azores.

28th May 2009

The work focused on the impact of electrical vehicles in the level of CO2 emissions.  As a result of this conference, their work may be promoted within the European Union.

For the researchers, winning this award was extremely gratifying, a “public acknowledgement from professors and top companies in the area of renewable energies”, working as an incentive for further research in this area.

The research work, supervised by João Peças Lopes, director of INESC Porto, meets the need to adapt the automotive sector to the current reality in which conventional energy resources are scarce. As such, it is necessary to define new energy vectors where “renewable” electricity plays a crucial role or, in other words, it is necessary to replace conventional vehicles by electrical ones.

In a first approach, without controlling vehicle loads, the work concluded that it is possible to replace 11% of conventional vehicles by electric vehicles without any type of investment in the national electrical system. In a second approach, the number of vehicles that can be integrated in a network goes up to 61%, with the adoption of smart charging. The research work concluded that the presence of electrical vehicles benefits the exploration of renewable energy sources in a sense that they prevent “clean” energy from being wasted. With 61% of electrical vehicles replacing the conventional ones, it will be possible to decrease carbon dioxide emissions by 20%, as opposed to a scenario without electric vehicles.

BIP, May 2009