Rafael Waters

This postdoctoral position at Uppsala University is part of a live collaboration with KTH and the City of Uppsala focused on the energy system for the city’s south-eastern districts, one of Sweden’s largest urban development projects. The project aims to support a solar-based microgrid testbed for a growing district and provide research-based evidence for sizing and technical design choices that strengthen energy security. The successful candidate will work at the Division of Electricity, Department of Electrical Engineering, within an international department based at the Ångström Laboratory. The role is embedded in the strategic research area STandUP for Energy and connects academic modelling with municipal planning and implementation. A substantial part of the work is carried out in close interaction with the City of Uppsala, giving access to planning materials, stakeholders, and questions that are directly relevant to the district’s development. The research task is to build on an existing energy system model and extend it to capture the microgrid’s technical structure and digital layer. The work includes modelling the microgrid topology, connection points, solar generation, local storage, and the interface to the local distribution grid. It also involves modelling the digital infrastructure, including metering, sensors, IoT, communication, and the control architecture that links these elements to the energy system. A major emphasis is placed on resilience and island operation. The project examines how design choices such as topology, protection, control architecture, and battery sizing affect recovery time and the ability of the district to maintain operation during disruptions. The work also explores smart control for peak shaving, flexibility, power quality, automatic restoration, and black start after outages. The position is one of two parallel postdoctoral appointments, with a complementary postdoc at KTH working on techno-economic evaluation based on the modelling results. Together, the two roles support the broader assessment of how electricity and heat supply can be planned, sized, and controlled in an integrated way. The postdoctoral researcher at Uppsala University will also contribute to the division’s development of a physical test environment, described as a physical twin, for the microgrid, and will disseminate results to scientific audiences and to municipal and other societal stakeholders. The appointment is full-time and fixed-term for 24 months. The work environment includes research, publication, conference presentation, and interaction with public-sector partners in a real-world urban energy project.