Parash Acharya
Contact
parash.acharya@pg.canterbury.ac.nz
Profile
After completing a Bachelor of Electrical and Electronic Engineering at Kathmandu University in 2005, Parash worked as a Research Engineer at Kathmandu Alternative Power and Energy Group (KAPEG) in Nepal for almost four and half years. His major contributions during his time at KAPEG include the development of small-scale wind turbines with wooden blades, for which he worked collaboratively with Risø, Denmark.
He earned a Master of Engineering with an endorsement in Electrical and Electronic Engineering from the University of Canterbury in 2013. Research in his final year focussed on the power converter design for a small-scale generating system with Power Factor Correction (PFC) and Maximum Power Point Tracking (MPPT) strategy. During his master’s degree he was awarded with a New Zealand Development Scholarship.
From September 2013 to June 2016, he worked as a lecturer in the Electrical and Electronic Engineering department at Kathmandu University.
Since November 2016, he has been studying towards a PhD at the EPECentre with the GREEN Grid project. His research focuses on developing a coordinated voltage control strategy in a low voltage distribution network with more Distributed Generations (DGs) and Electric Vehicles (EVs). The power converters associated with individual DGs, can be used for reactive power control to control the voltages at individual Installation Control Points (ICPs) within a network. With power flow in both directions, voltage control issues will be more complex. This will need to be addressed in the future as the New Zealand grid is expecting more DGs and EVs. Since early 2017, he has been developing a tool to run power flows, using half hourly households load data, looking at the voltage variations during different times of the year. In the future, he plans to develop a control strategy with reactive power optimisation techniques, running power flows using the same tools that he had previously developed.
“I am grateful to the EPECentre and GREEN Grid project for funding my PhD research study. With wonderful people around, I am relishing my time in this beautiful country.”