Understanding Large, Complex Power Systems

UTOPYS is a ten-year programme in which eight Dutch research institutions develop a new scientific foundation for the grid of 2050. At its core is a state-of-the-art national facility that simulates the power system of the future in full electromagnetic transient (EMT) detail, in real time, and at national scale. The experiments that matter most cannot be run on a live national grid, so we are building the grid to run them on.

The infrastructure is built to be shared. Models, data and methods are made available to the research community wherever possible, because the questions the energy transition raises are too large for any one consortium to answer.

National-scale grids, simulated in real time

At the core of UTOPYS is a cluster of parallel, fully synchronised RTDS NovaCor simulators running electromagnetic transient (EMT) models in real time: one second of simulation takes one second in reality.

That combination of size and switching-level detail at once is what makes the difference. It means your own models, algorithms and software can run against the simulation as it goes. It means the effect of a market agent can be traced all the way down to a converter switching event.

Alongside the hardware, UTOPYS builds a library of validated grid models and high-quality synthetic datasets, made available to researchers wherever possible.

The UTOPYS facility is built to be used by people outside the consortium. The facility is expected to open to external users in 2029, when researchers and engineers from academia and industry will be able to apply for time on it. The models and datasets it produces are made available wherever possible.

It supports any research where the power system sits at the core of the question, from stability and control to markets and regulation, cyber-physical resilience, and testing how new technologies behave in a large grid before they are deployed. The facility provides a ground truth: a physically accurate account of how a large system behaves, at a scale and level of detail that laboratory setups and field measurement cannot reach. You do not have to be a power systems specialist to use it, because the UTOPYS Library provides validated components, archetypical system models and synthetic datasets that can be adapted to a research question rather than built from scratch.

The access procedure is being finalised and will be published here soon. If you think UTOPYS could support your work, register your interest now and we will contact you as soon as applications open.

UTOPYS is carried out by a consortium of eight Dutch research institutions (Delft University of Technology, Eindhoven University of Technology, University of Twente, University of Groningen, Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica, Utrecht University, Radboud University and Erasmus University Rotterdam), with SURF as cooperation partner, funded by NWO under the National Roadmap for Large-Scale Research Infrastructure.