PhD in Engineering - Ontology Enhanced Digital Twins for Future Smart Grids

About the Project

The scope of this PhD has been co-created between SP Energy Networks and the University of Glasgow, as part of the strategic alliance centred on the future of secure cyber physical energy networks.

Smart grids will face two overarching future challenges: (1) managing exponentially growing big data from millions of distributed devices, and (2) ensuring reliable, secure, and automated grid operations under increasingly complex conditions.

This PhD will explore how ontologies (formal semantic models) can be embedded into digital twins of smart grids to deliver new learning and advance technical capabilities relating to challenges such as:

• interoperability between heterogeneous devices
• real time reasoning and automated decision making
• simulation accuracy and adaptability
• integration of distributed energy resources (DERs)
• resilience, fault detection, and predictive maintenance

The PhD will research how a semantically rich digital twin can not only mirror the physical grid but also understands the relationships, constraints, and behaviours within it. The candidate would design a modular digital twin architecture of the smart grid, and create the intelligence layer (semantic model) to support improved Smart Grid performance, validation of operational choices, and foresight of future emergent system behaviours.

Prospective candidates with prior experience and interest areas such as (but not limited to) smart grid modelling (e.g. OpenDSS, MATPOWER, GridAPPS D), ontologies e.g. CIM, SAREF, SOSA/SSN, distributed systems, programming, data analysis and knowledge architectures, would be well aligned to the scope of the proposed area of PhD research. Candidates with non-traditional backgrounds are encouraged.

This studentship will be advertised until filled. Early application is therefore encouraged.

Informal enquiries are strongly encouraged: dimitrios.pezaros@glasgow.ac.uk