Research Facilities

Our Power Engineering Advanced Research Laboratory (PEARL) at Monash University is equipped with the state-of-the-art real-time simulation facilities, a laboratory-scale microgrid, and a high voltage test laboratory. In addition, at Monash University we are rolling out a campus-wide microgrid, to be used as a living lab for our research purposes.

Real-Time Simulators

We have real-time simulation platforms from OPAL-RT and RTDS with the extended simulation capabilities in the areas of:

Wide Area Monitoring Protection and Control

Real-time monitoring of active distribution networks

Power system protection

Power electronics HIL tests

Monash Campus Microgrid

At Monash University we aim to achieve net zero carbon emissions by 2030, and therefore, the goal is to supply all the energy of the campus by renewable energy resources. As a part of this mission, we're building an on-site microgrid at Monash Clayton campus.

"The microgrid will be operated as a grid connected smart embedded network containing a variety of distributed energy resources (DER) including up to 1MW of rooftop solar, 20 buildings with automated energy management systems, 1 MWh of battery storage and electric vehicle charging stations."

Laboratory Scale Microgrid

We have a laboratory-scale microgrid consists of 10 kW PV and different battery storage systems to test various operation and control scenarios.

High Voltage Laboratory

The high voltage laboratory at Electrical and Computer Systems Engineering (ECSE) department of Monash University is equipped with following equipment:

300kV, 20kVA transformer

300kV, 1.5kJ impulse generator

1600kV, 22kJ impulse generator

+/- 30kV 0-5kHz high-voltage power amplifier

400kV DC source