We have been electrifying industries, powering homes and transforming life through innovation and collaboration for more than 100 years. Empowered by our goal, we are determined to enable fossil free living. To succeed we, as one of Europe's leading energy companies, must be fossil-free ourselves. 

But that’s not enough. That’s why we are looking beyond our own industry, to see where we can really make a difference. 

Power Climate Smarter living - that’s our purpose. We are looking for the brightest students to make this happen. Together you will contribute to a fossil free future. You will have a unique position to contribute to our purpose. All we ask from you is to use your Superpowers and share your energy to help us achieve our goal.   

Join us in our journey towards a fossil-free life. 

The department Power Technology at R&D creates value for the company and performs the cooperate R&D about electric power systems. It helps Vattenfall realize its strategy. We develop cost effective, safe, and sustainable solutions to improve the infrastructure of Vattenfall assets including Hydro, Wind, Nuclear, Markets, Customer and Solutions, Heat, and Distribution.

Thesis subject:

Today there is a discussion in how different production plants take part of providing system services to the power system and with that contribute with more or less damping to transients, i.e., how voltage, rotor-angle, and frequency stability is influenced by different plants.

There are differences between new nuclear and new wind power plants in their capabilities to provide system stability for the power system. Nuclear is providing a controllable power resource with stabilizing inertia, short-circuit power, as well as capacity to control the voltage with reactive power. Modern wind power provides an intermittent power production, voltage control, as well as frequency control. Also, by adding batteries to a wind farm a more complete frequency control can be delivered including faster frequency control.

The aim of the thesis is to discuss and show differences in control of power (production planning) as well as dynamic behaviors of wind and nuclear power and to show how this is influencing the stability of the power system.

In the project an equivalent model of the Nordic power system will be used, the so-called Nordic32-model. Either the tool PowerFactory or PSS/E will be used to perform simulations in the time-domain and potentially also in the frequency domain.

Timeline

• Literature review of new nuclear and wind power and their control capabilities.
• Establish a power system model in a software, either PowerFactory or PSS/E.
• Add models of new wind and nuclear plants and their control. Also batteries with their control will be added.
• Investigate how different types of plants influence the power system dynamics when applying disturbances such as loss of large production plants, short-circuits, and voltage dips. How is the power system dynamic changed when adding either nuclear or wind power plants?
• Writing of report and make conclusions.

The assignment is for 1 student.

We are looking for students to join our journey towards a fossil free future. You are soon to be graduated from your academic studies. You also identify yourself with our principles: active, open, positive, and safety.

• Education – Any of the following master programs or similar: Electric Power Engineering or System, or Energy System.
• Scope - 30hp.
• Written and spoken English.
• Experience with working in the software PowerFactory, PSS/E, or similar simulator software.
• MATLAB Simulink.
• Experience with C/C# is a merit.

• Start of assignment: mid-January, 2025.
• Location: Solna 
• Application – a document with your CV and grades are to be submitted in the application.
• Deadline for application is 2024-12-01.
• Contact persons and supervisors at Vattenfall are: Jonas Persson, Viktorija Dudjak, and Bashar Alahmad; [email protected].

Diversity & inclusion - in everything we do

At Vattenfall we build on the fact that diverse teams can outperform homogeneous teams. But we can only unleash and leverage the power of diversity, if we make everybody feel included. Read more about our important work on diversity & inclusion https://careers.vattenfall.com/about-us/diversity-and-inclusion/

Since Vattenfall is a part of the Swedish critical infrastructure, many of our services are security classed. If this position is security classed the final candidates might be subjected to a security vetting process, according to the Swedish legislation