Nilanjan Ray Chaudhuri, assistant professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, received a $132,182 National Science Foundation grant to research and develop a model that could help stabilize large power grids while increasing the use of renewable energy.
The research will help provide a deeper understanding of the impact of data dropouts and delays in communication channels on wide-area grid stabilization controls, and create new ways to help grids prevent large-scale problems.
“Increasing the amount of wind integration is a big deal,” Ray Chaudhuri said. “If we can do it by replacing the current energy sources or by adding above conventional generation, it would be a very important step toward achieving environmental emissions and carbon footprint goals around the globe.”
Ray Chaudhuri’s research will focus on the integration of renewable energy, mostly from wind farms, into a large power grid. His team will use a reduced model of the United State’s Eastern Interconnection, which includes the East Coast and much of the Midwest.
The project will use two new techniques that rely on computational estimation of dropped data packets that power grid controllers would receive. The estimates would be used to prevent the controllers from misoperation.
The research could prove that networked control systems can effectively stabilize a large power grid, Ray Chaudhuri said.
Ray Chaudhuri said little work has been done on the computational challenges of power grids because of the size and scope of the components involved. Ray Chaudhuri’s project will look into the reduction of the size of the model through novel frequency-domain abstractions. This reduction could help computation and control in real time.
The NSF award number is 1464208 and the abstract can be found here.
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