China remains the world's largest electric car market, and the UK is leading deployment of electric vehicles (EVs) to meet the new net-zero 2050 emission target. Both nations will face challenges in connecting EVs in urban areas due to limited land space, constraints on carrying additional power over traditional transmission lines and challenges in providing reliable power to critical load centres. This proposal identifies areas of common technical challenges and lays out a joint programme to analyse the issues and assess possible solutions. Urban areas are the significant location of critical loads such as hospitals, airports, public transport network and data centres. Fully exploiting the potential transfer capacity and resilience of the urban electricity network with a minimum capital investment is important to citizens and governments as 60% of Chinese population and 83% of UK population live in urban areas. To release the capacity of existing AC lines and to increase the reliability, a combined AC/DC configuration is proposed, and contribution of power electronic materials and converters are considered. Coordinated control of EVs, hybrid AC/DC networks and dispersed generation are investigated to optimise transfer capacity and enhance fault-tolerant operation with the support of Internet-of-Things (IoT) tools to enable an efficient decision-making. Two specific aspects will be investigated: the ability of IoT based data-driven modelling method to enable response services by coordinating dispersed resources in an urban power network and the headroom provided by power converters to accommodate this service. The contribution of IoT in providing useful data that enable the efficient management of urban power network is an emerging paradigm for the realisation of smart cities. As an essential part of daily life, optimal utilisation and reliability of electric energy becomes paramount. However, blackouts affecting the security and stability of the power system is an important issue. EVs storage capacity and optimal scheduling through power converters will be explored and quantified to provide grid support services in the event of an emergency situation. Protection schemes that can achieve fast and reliable identification and isolation with the aids of IoT, EVs and power converters are analysed in detail and re-engineering solutions proposed. Technical challenges from widespread use of dispersed resources connected to urban energy networks will be studied. Data-driven modelling will be applied to urban power systems to characterise the capacity of EVs and distributed generations that will allow two-way communication that transforms conventional networks into more secure networks. Traditional network topologies with the inclusion of power converters will be reassessed to eliminate potentially wasteful energy conversion stages and support flexibility services. Coordinated control of converters and distributed resources with spatial-temporary coupling and edge-cloud collaboration will be developed to make cost-effective, sustainable, resilient and fault-tolerant urban power system operation. The key outputs will be the data-driven modelling and analysis methods that can assess the spatial-temporary relation between distributed resources and urban electricity network (useful to system operators and equipment vendors); engineering solutions to map the capability of vehicle to grid services; optimal scheduling using power converters in the event of an emergency situation (useful to system operators, equipment vendors and EV owners); and verification through real-time simulation and scaled laboratory test systems. The main work programme will be conducted through international partnership with 1 China research institute, 2 China universities and 2 UK universities. Researchers involved in the project will benefit from the unique international collaboration and training.

The proposed multidisciplinary network for Decarbonizing Transport through Electrification (DTE) will bring together research expertise to address the challenges of interactions between energy networks, future electric vehicle charging infrastructure ( including roadside wireless charging, the shift to autonomous vehicles), electric and hybrid aircraft and electrification of the rail network. The DTE network will bring together industry, academia and the public sector to identify the challenges limiting current implementation of an electrified, integrated transport system across the automotive, aerospace and rail sectors. The network will develop and sustain an interdisciplinary team to solve these challenges, leveraging external funding from both public and private sectors, aiming to be become self sustainable in future and growing to establish an International Conference. The network will be inclusive, with a focus EDI and mechanisms to support colleagues such as early career researchers. The DTE network will address low-carbon transport modes (road, rail and airborne) alongside associated electricity infrastructures to support existing and deliver future mobility needs, treating these as an integrated system embedded within the electricity energy vector with the goal of decarbonising the transport sector. It will explore drivers for change within the transport system including technology innovation, individual mobility needs and economic requirements for change alongside environmental and social concerns for sustainability and consider the role, social acceptance and impact of policies and regulations to result in emissions reduction. The network has three key "Work Streams" focusing on: (i) vehicular technologies; (ii) charging infrastructure; (iii) energy systems. These will be underpinned by cross-cutting themes around large scale data analysis and human factors. The network also has a dedicated Work Stream on people-based activities to enable us to widen our dissemination and impact across other communities. The outcome of the DTE network is expected to transform current practices and research in the decarbonization of transport (considering a number of different perspectives).

The Internet of Energy (IoE) is a paradigm towards achieving a "zero-carbon" society by optimising electrical energy usage, especially for emerging loads such as Electric Vehicles. The paradigm is a recognition that integrating the internet of things with energy sources and demand loads, enables real-time processing of data streams to support actionable decision support. The aim of this centre-to-centre collaboration is to conduct fundamental multi-disciplinary research in the cyber resilience of future IoE systems. As electric vehicles are likely to make the greatest use of battery capacity in the future, they will play a key role in the IoE infrastructures. According to the "Global EV Outlook 2020" report (https://www.iea.org/reports/global-evoutlook-2020, International Energy Agency), Electric Vehicle sales topped 2.1M globally in 2019, surpassing 2018 - already a record year - to boost the stock to 7.2M electric cars. As technological progress in the electrification of two/three-wheelers, buses and trucks advances and the market for them grows, electric vehicles are expanding significantly. This growth is further amplified through government regulations, e.g. phasing out of diesel and petrol vehicles. This percentage is also likely to grow both in the United Kingdom and Australia. To meet climate-change goals, half of UK cars must be electric by 2030 (according to the UK government). Similarly, the Australian government (https://www.infrastructureaustralia.gov.au/) predicts that by 2040, electric vehicles (EVs) are projected to account for 70% to 100% of new vehicle sales. To meet the demand of the growing EV population, UK and Australian governments are ramping up the installation of charging infrastructure. For example, there are now more than 35,000 charge point connectors across the UK in over 13,000 locations - with around 7,000 charge point connectors added in 2020 alone. This makes electrical vehicles significant energy consumers in the IoE, with their batteries also providing the potential for energy storage in times of emergency or unexpected surges in demand. However, this benefit can only be effectively realised if we can secure the interaction between Electric Vehicles (EVs), charging infrastructure and the national grid. Since 2016, the number of cyber incidents involving vehicles has increased by 605%, with incident rates doubling on a year to year basis (according to 2020 Upstream security's global automotive cybersecurity report). The target of such cyber-attacks is not only private EVs but also commercial EVs. This proposal combines workstreams on attack modelling, data synthesis, attack generation and validation of these using testbeds across the UK and Australia. A simulator will be developed to support a number of "what-if" investigations in cyber resilience for EVs to be carried out. Partners in this proposal have expertise in cybersecurity, power electronics, electrical vehicles, artificial intelligence and distributed computing, and have extensive prior experience in multi-site collaborations. The IoE (cyber-physical) security theory developed in this project will also contribute to accelerated adoption of EV energy prosumers at the edge of the power grid. This proposal will also provide an opportunity for experienced and early career researchers to work collectively on the challenges identified above. A "future leaders" training programme will be developed as part of this proposal to create an "ideas exchange" community across students and academic faculty between the UK and Australian partners. Our industry partners will also be engaged through workshops and "sandpit" events to identify use cases that have industry relevance and which could provide the basis for future startups (in collaboration with entrepreneurship teams at our institutions). The shared testbeds and simulation environment developed will also provide a legacy on completion of this work.