Zhao Yuan

Head of Electrical Power Systems Laboratory (EPSLab).

Joint PhD degree from KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Comillas Pontifical University and Delft University of Technology in 2018. 2010 National Second Prize in China Contemporary Undergraduate Mathematical Contest in Modeling by China Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics. Proposed and proved the solution existence and uniqueness theorems of the convex optimal power flow (OPF) model based on second-order cone programming (SOCP). Led the development of the Energy Management System (EMS) of the 560kWh/720kVA Battery Energy Storage System (BESS) on EPFL campus and co-developed the Smart Grid in Aigle Switzerland in 2020. 

Research work on coordinated transmission-distribution operation was awarded by Advances in Engineering (AIE) as Key Scientific Article Contributing to Excellence in Science and Engineering Research in 2017. 

Article “Second-order cone AC optimal power flow: convex relaxations and feasible solutions” was awarded as the 2019 Best Paper in the Journal of Modern Power Systems and Clean Energy (MPCE).

Email: zhao.yuan@ntu.edu.sg,  zhaoyuan.phd@gmail.com

Work Experience

• Senior Scientist and Program Manager (PI), Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore, 2024 - present.

• Assistant Professor, University of Iceland, Reykjavik Iceland, 2021 - 2023.

• Scientist, Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Lausanne Switzerland, 2019 - 2021.

• Optimization Advisor, KIC InnoEnergy, Stockholm Sweden, 2017 - 2018.

Expertise

• Power System: optimal power flow, transimission network, distribution network, integration of renewable energy.

• Mathematical Optimization: convex and nonconvex optimization, solution algorithms.

• Electricity Market: network pricing, market power, game theory.

• Energy Storage: control , energy management system, grid services.

Invited Talks

• Real-time Control of Battery Energy Storage Systems, Southeast University, China, October 2021, online.

• Introducing the Electrical Power System Laboratory at the University of Iceland, Iceland Engineering Day, Iceland, October 2021.

• Recent Advances of Convex Optimal Power Flow. ShanghaiTech University, Shanghai, China, July 2019.

• Convex Optimal Power Flow Based on Conic Programming, Beijing Jiaotong University, China, July 2018.

• Models, Algorithms and Applications of Convex Optimal Power Flow. New York University, USA, February 2018.

• Models and Applications of Convex Optimal Power Flow. German Institute for Economic Research (DIW Berlin), Germany, February 2018.

• Distribution Locational Marginal Pricing by Convex Optimal Power Flow and Hierarchical Dispatch. Vattenfall, Sweden, October 2016.

• Implementation of the Nodal Pricing Regime for Distribution Network Pricing: A Benchmark Model. Energimarknadsinspektionen (Ei-Swedish Energy Markets Inspectorate), Sweden, October 2015.