SYSLAB
Access an open and flexible energy system for studying energy control, management, and renewable energy integration. Design your own energy architecture, access a robust control platform and standardized interfaces, and experiment under realistic conditions – all at Risø.
A Fully Controllable Energy System
Design, test and develop new energy control solutions for future energy systems
A plug-and-play microgrid for energy system research
SYSLAB is an advanced experimental facility at DTU’s Risø Campus, designed for testing and validating control strategies in active distribution networks. It offers a real-life microgrid environment where researchers and industry innovators can integrate and assess control solutions for sustainable energy systems.
Energy Domains
We facilitate research and testing across multiple energy domains
By providing a controllable platform for an actual energy system utilizing real energy components, SYSLAB enables the identification of integration challenges or technological issues across multiple energy domains – that could otherwise be overlooked in simulated settings. This comprehensive approach ensures that both physical and digital infrastructures are effectively evaluated, facilitating the development of robust, coordinated operational strategies for modern energy systems.
Electricity
District Heating
Natural Gas
Transport
Buildings
Automated Infrastructure
SYSLAB consists of an advanced and configurable electrical system and district heating system
Electrical System
26-busbar distribution grid with 8 km of distribution lines and 279 circuit breakers interconnecting 6 sites. Over 40 DER units (including production, consumption, and storage) ranging from 5 to 150 kVA each. Extended instrumentation featuring 136 multi-instruments and 3 PMUs.
26-Busbar Distribution Grid
8 km of Distribution Lines
279 Circuit Breakers Connecting 6 Sites
136 Multi-Instruments
3 PMUs
District Heating System
4.5 km of double pipe interconnecting 15 distribution headers across 5 sites. Over 10 DER units (including production, consumption, and storage) ranging from 10 to 50 kW each. Extended instrumentation.
4.5 km double pipe
15 Distribution Headers at 5 Sites
10+ DER Units
Research Fields
Explore operation and control methods across diverse energy application fields
Operation and control methods
Multi-energy system control
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Energy system architectures
When designing energy system architectures for flexible energy solutions, researchers can adopt three primary operation and control methods: Peer-to-peer, enabling direct energy exchange, Cell-based, organizing systems into units, or Hierarchical, applying a top-down coordination structure. Each approach offers unique benefits for optimizing energy flow and system adaptability. SYSLAB empowers you to build energy systems that align with your objectives, from peer-to-peer exchanges to hierarchical models. By unifying various energy components, SYSLAB enables precise experimentation and optimization of control strategies.
- Peer-to-Peer
- Cell Based
- Hierarchical
Application fields
At SYSLAB, you can explore various areas of energy system management, focusing on control, management, and performance verification methods for microgrids and system operations. Our research covers sector coupling, load flexibility, EV integration, electricity distribution, district heating, hybrid power plants, energy storage, and energy communities.
- Sector Coupling
- Load Flexibility
- Aggregation and Demand Flexibility
- EV Integration
- Electricity Distribution Networks
- District Heating Networks
- Hybrid Power Plants and Energy Storage
- Energy Communities
Access our API-driven platform and control real energy components within a live microgrid
API-driven access to an open and configurable energy system
At the core of SYSLAB lies an API-driven control platform that streamlines energy research. With its standardized interface, researchers can simulate, monitor, and steer diverse energy infrastructures while tailoring system architectures to specific research needs. Whether managing wind turbines, solar panels, or EV chargers, SYSLAB allows seamless integration and remote control of real energy components and ressources.
SYSLAB supports distributed control, allowing you to manage and test energy systems across multiple devices with remote access. Our capabilities span from centralized coordination to fully decentralized decision-making, ensuring maximum flexibility for energy system experimentation.
Empowering a sustainable and decentralised energy system
The future 100% renewable energy system will exploit the potential from highly decentralized controllable energy resources to achieve an integrated system that is reliable and affordable for society as well as end-users. SYSLAB provides large flexibility of electricity and heat system network topology as well as in control architecture and algorithms. This is supported by a very high level of automation that include remote online configuration changes and deployment of controllers on the participating units for a truly distributed system. Additionally, very long historic time series are available for the RE units in the system that be used for training ML-based controllers.