Professor Pierluigi Mancarella awarded 2018 Newton Prize

Professor Pierluigi Mancarella, Program Leader for Energy Systems at MEI, has been awarded the 2018 Newton Prize for an international project on power system resilience.

The prestigious Newton Prize is an annual £1 million fund in the UK for science and innovation partnerships that collaborate internationally to address global development challenges. Five recipients were awarded the 2018 Newton Prize at the Royal Society in London last month, with the funds being distributed across all projects.

Professor Mancarella was awarded the prize for his work on resilient planning of low-carbon power systems in countries vulnerable to environmental hazards.

The project, a collaboration between the University of Manchester and the University of Chile, uses new mathematical models to strengthen energy infrastructure to withstand extreme weather and natural disasters.

Professor Mancarella, the UK Principle Investigator on the project, said: “The Newton Prize will enable further improvement of our advanced resilience assessment and planning tools and, importantly, facilitate their application to more developing countries which face varying threats related to extreme weather and natural hazards."

Professor Mancarella and colleagues at the Melbourne Energy Institute are also currently developing resilience planning tools for the Australian power and energy system. This research is particularly relevant in the context of recent extreme weather events, including the heat waves only few days ago.