The Amsterdam Business School (ABS), part of the Faculty of Economics and Business of the University of Amsterdam (UvA), has a vacancy for a PhD candidate in Energy Systems Integration.

This PhD research is part of the Energy Intranets project, an NWO (Netherlands Organisation of Scientific Research) funded project in Energy Systems Integration & Big Data call.

The share of renewable energy sources grows, decentralization of production and control increases. Because of their partly controllable variation in mostly decentral energy generation, balancing the electricity grid matching supply and demand is getting more challenging.

The objective of the Energy Intranets project is to investigate the use of data-driven demand and supply matching in the context of a concrete use case of Sympower, a demand response aggregator that enables smarter energy use by aggregating energy consuming systems and appliances.

The PhD student will work on the application of Big Data and High Performance Computing (HPC) to network optimisation for smart grids, and its impact on business models of various stakeholders. Focus will be on how to combine real-time data and simulation models to predict more reliable as an effective tool for the monetization of the Virtual Power Plants assets.

Important research questions that will be addressed include:

• How can HPC support making more accurate predictions of production and consumption profiles (aggregated over the micro-grid) at time-scales that would enable a controller to efficiently match demand and supply just-in-time?
• Can we develop within the microgrid an internal imbalance market that would incentivize an optimal integration of resources and would guide demand response and storage usage?
• Can we maximize the deployment of renewables, enhance the resilience of the electricity grid, improve the efficiency of the power system and decrease the costs?
• Is it possible to increase the share of renewables in the mix of energy resources without raising the price of energy, and how would the business model look like?

The research will take place in collaboration with the SURF Open Innovation Lab at SURFsara, providing expertise and facilities on HPC and Big Data analytics.

• Master’s degree in the area of informatics, data science, or business administration with excellent grades and a demonstrable interest in ICT, simulation and modelling, cognitive science and/or business analytics;
• well-developed analytical skills, creativity, precision, and perseverance;
• entrepreneurial spirit and interest in business modelling;
• the drive to publish in top-level academic journals in the field of energy and management;
• mastery of both written and spoken English.

You will be appointed for an initial period of 18 months with a possibility to extend it for another 2,5 years, pending positive evaluation. As part of your contract, you will spend 20% of your time on teaching. You will be classified as PhD candidate (promovendus) in the Dutch University job-ranking system (UFO), providing a gross monthly starting salary of €2,325 to €2,972 gross per month in the first year (which increases to €2.840 in the final year) with an additional end-of-year bonus (8,3%) and holiday allowance (8%). The Collective Labour Agreement of Dutch Universities (Cao) is applicable.

University of Amsterdam

With over 5,000 employees, 30,000 students and a budget of more than 600 million euros, the University of Amsterdam (UvA) is an intellectual hub within the Netherlands. Teaching and research at the UvA are conducted within seven faculties: Humanities, Social and Behavioural Sciences, Economics and Business, Law, Science, Medicine and Dentistry. Housed on four city campuses in or near the heart of Amsterdam, where disciplines come together and interact, the faculties have close links with thousands of researchers and hundreds of institutions at home and abroad.  

The UvA’s students and employees are independent thinkers, competent rebels who dare to question dogmas and aren’t satisfied with easy answers and standard solutions. To work at the UvA is to work in an independent, creative, innovative and international climate characterised by an open atmosphere and a genuine engagement with the city of Amsterdam and society.

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Amsterdam Business School (ABS)

The Amsterdam Business School (ABS) is part of the Faculty of Economics and Business of the University of Amsterdam (UvA). We have an international population of over 3,000 students and are located in the centre of Amsterdam, the cultural and financial capital of the Netherlands. The facilities of the campus are modern and Amsterdam is an excellent place to live where people are friendly, tolerant and the ease with other cultures and languages. ABS has a broad portfolio of outstanding teaching and research programmes and is characterised by its international focus, the strong ties to the city of Amsterdam and its focus on several key areas such as finance, entrepreneurship, business analytics/big data and business & society/CSR.

The Department of Operations management of the Amsterdam Business School is involved in research in a broad range of areas of operations management, industrial statistic, operations research, information management, big data, data science, computer science and management science.

http://www.uva.nl/en/shared-content/organisatiegids/en/university-of-amsterdam/faculties/faculty-of-economics-and-business-feb/department-of-business-studies/department-of-business-studies.html