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- Research focus
- The power grid delivers the energy generated from power plants to end users. It serves as the cardiovascular in urban systems and provides "life blood" for any organization to function. The rapid expanding urban systems demands for a power grid whose capability of energy delivery and provision of service greatly exceeds what is presently achieved. Challenges of particular importance include dynamizing modeling and analysis of the power grid, and improving energy efficiency-to-cost ratio at the end-user level. Seeing power grid with dynamic data enables optimization of its operational strategies to real-time needs and coordination with other energy systems, such as, water, gas and transportation.
- Dynamizing analysis is difficult in part because the data collected at system level are scattered in time and space. Electrical models must be applied to augment based on their specific applications. Likewise, energy efficiency and cost improvement at end-user level is difficult because of the stochastic nature of electricity markets and the diverse grid structures implementing these economic schemes.
- Our research group is working to address these challenges through a combination of new techniques. Our research focus are summarized as three areas:
- Distribution grid analysis
- Distribution grid is the last stage of energy delivery. It supports the high-voltage transmission system and is directly connected to end users. We have been developing techniques to analyze the impact of integrating emerging technologies and new types of loads (e.g. data center, level-III electrical vehicles and special industrial load) on the distribution systems and their countermeasures .
- End user engagement
- Understanding end user engagement is important by the possibility of managing and trading energy at the consumer side, which is enabled by Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) and demand response programs. We are exploring optimal grid configurations, operation strategies and new load management algorithms that together increase the capacity and mitigate the disturbances of demand side participation. It is anticipated that the techniques under development will lead to operation cost reduction of utilities and improvement of end-user service satisfaction.
- Grid planning and operation
- We investigate optimal sizes and sites of regulating devices, distributed generation, ultra-fast charging stations and network topologies to enhance the reliability and security of the power grid. In addition, we study the optimal operation strategies for these devices. Distinguished from conventional approaches, we draw tools from modern control and optimization theories and consider the interaction between the power grid and bottom-level devices (e.g., from synchronous generators to power-electronics based loads), which dynamics spread over a wide range of timeframes.
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