All posts by Panagiotis Moutis

News, PhD opportunity on Battery R&D - US Citizens & LPR

Immediate PhD opportunity for Virtual Power Plant battery research

November ’25 (edited)

Sanjoy Banerjee and I are recruiting one PhD student in the framework of the Translational Research Excellence Across Disciplines (TREAD) program funded by the Dept. of Ed (EDIT: TREAD website with more details about program priorities and framework here). Our work will focus on identifying battery chemistries and plan battery deployments for cost-optimal load management of residential and small commercial US customers. We aim to improve existing programs and yield savings of at least 10% per household or business in 5 years. We will go beyond the peak shaving practices and work on the pragmatic coordination of services valuable to distribution systems via the paradigm of Virtual Power Plants.

The PhD student will join the DEgIDAL group starting in Spring or Fall ’26. DEgIDAL is part of the Dept. of Electrical Engineering (EE) at the City College of the University of New York (ranked 4th behind the top world colleges in the value of the EE degree).  The student will also be trained with Prof. Banerjee’s group and at the CUNY Energy Institute. The student receives at least 2-year guaranteed stipends (highest research assistant rate),  and additional funding for research supplies/materials, core facilities fees and travel budget for conferences and workshops.

Successful applicants must demonstrate (via transcripts or peer-reviewed publications):

  • extensive energy modeling and electricity markets expertise,
  • strong optimization and statistical background (Bayesian statistics, cone programming, stochastic programming),
  • coding experience (preferably in artificial intelligence paradigms such as neural networks, decision trees, SVMs, clustering, genetic algorithms).

The opportunity is open only to US Citizens and Legal Permanent Residents (green card).

For more information and to express your interest contact me via email with your CV and subject line “(your name) – CCNY TREAD PhD opportunity”.

Blog, Moutis on the AI-Electricity Nexus

Press updates – Artificial Intelligence, Electrical Grid & Electricity Markets

October 2025

In the past few weeks the Climate Change AI Initiative introduced me to 2 reporters for input on the matter of the recent peaking interest in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and its effects to electrical grids and electricity markets.

Recent AI breakthroughs have meant the rampant growth of data center deployment and their load demand. For those unfamiliar with the topic, Machine Learning (ML), a branch of AI, requires training data to extract statistical mapping from certain types of input to patterns, knowledge or forecasting of trends or phenomena. At the current stage of ML development, the training data have become immense in size, hence, the meteoric increase in data centers and their electricity consumption. Even though, OpenAI, xAI and Meta blew open this Pandora’s Box in later 2022, there were signs that deep ML was leading us this was as early as 2020. I recall a panel I shared with utility C-suites saying that compared to 2-5% year-to-year throughout the 2010s, they have been updating their load growth outlooks by multiple folds in the early 2020s.

As I told Olivia Prusky from the PhillyDaily.com for her article “Is Pennsylvania ready to power the next industrial revolution with AI?“, I have not been surprised by Trump’s administration push for powering of this AI boom with fossil fuels. But I have been surprised by how Big Tech have had similar plans all along, even when they claimed otherwise (during the Biden administration). Which brings about my first concern: Big Tech buying all gas units they can get their hands on, means fewer procurement sources for utilities. In April ’25, FERC denied the Talon-Amazon agreement that would “strand” nuclear power exclusively for Amazon data center uses; granted, due to cost reasons, but the broader gist is unchanged. In a deregulated electricity market all assets should be competitively “contested”… When certain players can “hoard” all the gas generators (just because they know they will need it for their own immense load demand), we might be very well going down the road of supply shortfalls. In technical terms, brownouts and/or blackouts. A few analysts confirmed my fears just a few hours ago…

Albeit service interruptions are the improbable side-effect of the rise of AI, the climbing electricity costs are pretty much a certainty of the present reality. Throughout the northeastern US, as reported by the Washington Post, electricity bills have been increasing several units or dozens of units percent… Given this context, I was very careful when MIT Technology Review‘s Casey Crownhart‘s asked for my comments on whether AI can help the grid. When it comes to electricity prices, AI already “costs” more than it “benefits” the broader public. Wind, solar and load forecasting, expert systems, and image recognition (LiDAR-based vegetation monitoring near power lines) are not novel AI accomplishments that can justify the price tag we all have had to pay for the past few months.

Also, we have not yet seen what may happen under stressed economic conditions, a harsh winter or some widespread grid disruptions. Leading up to 2021, there were limited if no concerns at all regarding the affordability, reliability and resilience of the ERCOT grid. Come winter storm Uri, hundreds (maybe thousands?) of families were faced with massive bills due to lack of generating capacity during those cold-snap days. As the US electrical grid is not expanding at any efficient pace, new generation cannot connect in time and the existing generation is bottlenecked by grid congestions. The uphill of energy costs is only going to get steeper.

However, there is something that annoys me the most and I have not had the chance to express in either of the 2 articles that asked for my input. The US Energy Policy has been short-sighted by both the previous and the current Administrations. In my view, nothing is more indicative of failed major Energy Policy than legislating it through the budget reconciliation process. The grid does not suffer from “money” problems, but from framework problems; numerous and clunky permitting processes, legal battles, cost allocation, etc. Throwing money to favor certain technologies, analyses or roadmaps is not solving anything mentioned in the previous sentence.

I do not claim to have a solution to the market forces that are driving any liberalized sector of the economy – energy being one of them. However, FERC, NERC, EIA, the Dept. of Energy and several OUs within and beyond the cited authorities are tripping over NIMBY-isms, antiquated perspectives and slow learning curves. There are smart people, with novel ideas and bird’s eye-view of what is hurting the electricity sector. It is important to confer with these people and ask them how to best navigate the operating and economical nuances of the “largest machines in the world”. It is also important to allow/fund them to work on these problems and not put numerous obstacles in their way.

News, SETO DoE W/s at NYU & IEEE PES Grid Edge (Nov. '24)

Dept. of Energy workshop at NYU & IEEE PES Grid Edge Tech’s Conference

November 2024

On December 2nd I will be heading out to the Tandon School of Engineering of NYU, invited by Yuzhang Lin to contribute to a workshop sponsored by the Solar Energy Technology Office (SETO) of the Dept. of Energy in the framework of the awarded research grant “Graph-Learning-Assisted State and Event Tracking for Solar-Penetrated Power Grids with Heterogeneous Data Sources.” My contribution will be on Optimal Power Flow (OPF) solver with Machine Learning and how to effectively approximate the OPF for distribution grids.

With the new year and on Jan. 22nd, I will be in San Diego at the IEEE PES Grid Edge Technologies Conference & Expo, joining my good friend and super bright researcher Grant Ruan, who organizes a panel on the value and use cases of Virtual Power Plants in grids of today and tomorrow.

Reach out if you are going to be on either of these two events!

MIT WVU workshop on IBRs - Oct. '24, News

NSF workshop on IBRs at MIT

October 2024

Many thanks to Prof. Anurag Srivastava, West Virginia University, and Prof. Anuradha Annaswamy, MIT, for inviting me to their NSF-supported workshop on “Enabling Cyber-Resilient Distribution Systems with Edge Inverter-Based Resources (IBR)” at MIT, Boston, on Saturday Oct. 19th.  I reviewed my work on digital twins of distribution transformers and overhead conductors and made the case for why digital twins of IBRs are becoming imminently necessary, if we wish to maintain a high level of reliability, stability and security in electrical grids with high shares of Renewable Energy.

The overall consensus of the group was that, although there are many methods, platforms and hardware to optimally and effectively control and use IBRs, there are still many open questions:

  • We are uncertain about the interactions among IBRs,
  • The standards and guidelines are not always followed by IBR owners,
  • We need robust IBR model validation,
  • The topology of distribution systems might be an additional unknown factor that affects greatly the IBR effects to the grid,
  • The industry is already faced with challenges in integrating and controlling large numbers of IBRs under critical conditions.

The workshop allowed me to reconnect with many great friends and colleagues. I was overjoyed to also meet with one of my students from my PhD time back in Greece, Dr. Elli Ntakou. Dr. Ntakou is now working at Eversource and presented their work on resilience under climate risks. It was fun to have us take a photo along with my PhD student Ioannis Vourkas, as a form of my academic circle from the 2010s to the 2020s, and from Greece to the USA.

News, Recent & Upcoming Talks

Upcoming Seminars & some recent ones

November 2023

With the start of the 2023-24 academic semester at my new academic home, the Dept. of EE at the CCNY of the CUNY,  I had little time to announce in advance and thank the hosts for inviting me to offer talks and seminars at their institutions. That been said, I owe some gratitude and will also give some heads-up for next events that you can catch me at. Here we go!

Starting from the upcoming seminars, I am delighted beyond what words can describe to be returning to Greece and Cyprus to present my recent works at the Dept. of ECE at the University of Patras on Tuesday Jan. 9th, at the Dept. of ECE at the University of Cyprus on Friday Jan. 12th, at the Dept. of ECE at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki on an. 16th and, last but not least, at my alma mater the Dept. of ECE at the National Technical University of Athens (date TBD). I want to wholeheartedly thank Professors Alexandridis, Papadaskalopoulos, Aristidou, Panteli, Papagiannis and Hatziargyriou for hosting me. I look forward to meeting with old classmates and revisiting the halls in which we worked together in the mid 2010s.

As for past events, in mid May as one of my last acts at Carnegie Mellon University, I had the distinct honor to deliver a Charge to the 2021-23 Graduates of the Energy Science, Technology & Policy MSc program. Emotions overwhelmed me and I will forever carry with me the love and trust that the Program Director Prof. Paul Salvador and the numerous MSc students put in me, and my educational and mentoring efforts. Lastly, in July, at the 2023 IEEE PES General Meeting in Orlando, I contributed to three panel sessions going over results from and aspirations for my recent and earlier works on Digital Twins for grid components, Wavelet Synopses for timeseries data, and Microgrids for exurban residential communities. Many thanks to Harry Konstantinou, Masoud Nazari and Di Shi for inviting me to these highly engaging sessions.

 

 

 

 

Joining EE at CCNY in Aug. '23, News

Joining the Dept. of Electrical Engineering at CCNY in Aug. ’23

May 2023

I am ecstatic to announce that on Aug. 1st I will be joining the Dept. of Electrical Engineering within the Grove School of Engineering at the City College of New York (CCNY), as Assistant Professor. It is amazing to join an Institution with 175 years of history, founded as the first tuition-free college in the US (until 1976), and which still strives to provide wider access to higher education for all. Two units within CCNY have been named after notable alumni, who decisively redefined their course with their donations and leadership: the Colin Powell School for Civic and Global Leadership (after the first African American Sec. of State) and the Grove School of Engineering (after one of Intel’s founding members & CEO, Andrew Grove). At CCNY, I will establish the Digitalized Electric Grid Innovations, Developments & Applications Laboratory (DEgIDAL). DEgiDAL will focus on how data-sets of historical records and real-time synchronized measurements can inform renewable energy pricing, grid stability and protection, and equitable access to electricity of high power quality for all.

I am grateful to everyone at Carnegie Mellon University for 6 wonderful years as postdoc and special faculty, and for enabling me to take on important roles within the US energy space. My postdoc advisors Profs. Gabriela Hug and Soummya Kar trained me thoroughly in power system optimization. Prof. Jay Whitacre involved me in breakthrough research on battery storage planning. Profs. Jay Apt, Paul Salvador, Barry Rawn, Sevin Yeltekin and Willem van Hoeve inspired me and supported me in developing and teaching 5 courses, and in advising more than a dozen MSc students from the College of Engineering and the Tepper School of Business.

Undoubtedly, this immensely joyful milestone would have been impossible without the strong Electrical & Computer Engineering foundations I received at my alma mater, the National Technical University of Athens (NTUA), Greece. In the form of gratitude I will refer specifically to two exquisite people that defined my path at NTUA. Firstly, my PhD+MSc advisor, the tireless and all-round power systems scholar Prof. Nikos Hatziargyriou, taught me most of what I know and was the ‘charge’ of my academic journey across the Atlantic. Secondly, Prof. Timos Sellis, a bright beacon of databases’ expertise, was the one who infused me with the passion for artificial intelligence and machine learning through data mining.

Lastly, I want to thank Drs. Giannis Bourmpakis, Kyri Baker, Constance Crozier, Jeff Wischkaemper, Mads Almassalkhi and Javad Mohammadi, and Profs. Fran Li, David Infield, Barry Rand, Luigi Vanfretti, Costa Samaras and Antonio Conejo for advising and encouraging me in the past couple of years of my faculty job search. The process was tough, sometimes dubious (if not outright scandalous in a few cases), but the support from these people kept me going!

In a few months I will be recruiting for 3 fully-funded PhD positions to join DEgIDAL. Stay tuned & reach out.

Respice.  Adspice.  Prospice.

 

Jan '23 IEEE Publications' Roles Updates, News

IEEE Publications’ roles updates Jan. ’23

January 2023

Prof. Fran Li, the EiC of the IEEE Open Access Journal of Power & Energy (OAJPE), kindly informed me I have been awarded the Outstanding Associate Editor (AE) recognition for 2022. It is always exciting to realize you are doing your job well, let alone in a nascent publication with exciting trajectory, immense potential and a respectful and strong Open Access policy. I would have not received this recognition without the expert Reviewers that accept my invitations and contribute their thoughtful and in-depth comments on the manuscripts submitted to the IEEE OAJPE. To my dear Reviewers, thank you for putting up with me and taking on my assignments!

Another very exciting development is that I have been nominated by the IEEE Young Professionals (YP) for the position of the YP representative with voting rights at the IEEE Publication Services and Products Board (PSPB). This is a special honor and, also, acknowledgement of all my efforts to improve and enhance the quality of scientific publications, especially in my field of power and energy systems. Beyond my own personal experience, I have been lucky that many friends and colleagues who are Authors, Reviewers and Associate Editors across multiple publications have trusted me with their concerns and ideas. I plan to make the best of this opportunity and all input I have received during my 2023 term at the PSPB, aiming for positive and valuable changes.

In the context of both these updates, please, do not hesitate to contact me with your availability to review papers in the scope of your expertise and also tell me of any concerns and ideas you got for the improvement of publications. I will treat all input as confidential and I am thankful in advance for your interest!

2023 IEEE ISGT NA panel & contest, News

Panel at 2023 IEEE ISGT North America & “Ask the Panelists” Contest

December 2022

With the Inflation Reduction Act in the US and similar incentivizing initiatives all over the world, the clean energy transition is – more or less (and hopefully!) – set on long-term and fast(er) tracks. In this context, the roles and impact of grid modernization, its digitalization and the broader space of (what we call) the “smart grid” become rather interesting. This is because the electricity sector has never – practically – suffered from lack of capital. So one may ask why would the recently introduced frameworks matter and justify expectations for significant changes?

With the support of the IEEE Smart Grid, I invited some good friends, colleagues and alumni of my courses at CMU for a panel at the 2023 IEEE North America Innovative Smart Grid Technologies (ISGT) conference. Together we will probe the new electricity sector landscape and answer some challenging questions about how the decarbonization of this space must rely on a range of solutions, including, among many others, infrastructure planning, energy security, non-wire alternatives and policy per se. I am grateful to my panelists Clare Callahan (Deloitte & CMU alumni), Doug Houseman (Burns McDonnell), Damir Novosel (Quanta Technology) and Rob Gramlich (Grid Strategies LLC, ex-FERC, ex-PJM & others) for joining me in this 1.5 hours endeavor on Tuesday, Jan. 17th at 12:30 pm ET! Special thanks go out to Hannah Morrey Brown (Burns McDonnell) & Shay Bahramirad (Quanta Technology) whom I had initially invited  as panelists, but needed to kindly defer to colleagues.

But wait… There’s more!

With the support of the Climate Change AI (CCAI) Initiative we are organizing a contest for questions for our panelists. The top-5 submitters (judged by CCAI Power & Energy Community Leads) will win complementary remote live access to the panel, during which they may ask their questions themselves! We are particularly interested in receiving questions from junior researchers and young professionals. The Contest will run until January 10th 23:59 AoE. The link to the contest is here. Best of luck to all of you!

 

Keynote speech NJIT ECE Students' Conference Dec. 9, News

Keynote Speech at North Jersey Research Student Conference 2022

November 2022

I am honored and humbled by my dear friend’s, Dr. Philip Pong‘s, invitation to offer the keynote speech at the 1st edition of the North Jersey Research Student Conference. The Conference will be held on December 9th at the Dept. of Electrical & Computer Engineering, at the New Jersey Institute of Technology. I am particularly happy, as this initiative aims first and foremost to promote and encourage students’ research at all levels within the dept. of ECE at NJIT; postdocs, PhD, MSc and undergraduate students will be presenting their most recent research results in the aims of exploring collaborations and impactful outreach!

My keynote speech will be on my recent work on digital twins for near real time sensing and monitoring of – mostly – distribution grid components (transformers and overhead conductors) for security and power quality. I will also be sitting in the committee of the Awards & Certificates of Merit of the presented students’ works.

I hope and wish that more and more ECE departments will organize similar conferences to empower their students and inspire them to engage and collaborate across seniority.

 

Newcastle University Optimization Group DT AC OPF Webinar Nov. 21, News

Webinar on Decision Trees for AC OPF at Newcastle University Optimization Group

November 2022

It is always a joy to join (albeit remotely) the co-organizer of the Newcastle University Optimization Group Webinars, my old student, the very hard-working and inspiring researcher Dr. Ilias Sarantakos. On, Nov. 21st at 14:00 – 15:00 (London time) I will be presenting my recently published paper at the IET Generation, Transmission & Distribution journal on the solution of the AC OPF with the machine learning tool of top-down heuristically inducted binary decision trees (hiBDT). I strongly urge you to register and follow the Group’s webinar series here. They also neatly keep recordings of the webinars they have previously organized here; great resource and a nice overview of recent developments in the space.

I will be discussing the theoretical guarantees (and some apparent implications) of a feasible space search with hiBDT recursively tightening the bounds/intervals of control variables towards a global optimum. The IEEE PES Task Force’s Power Grid library will be briefly presented as a crucial benchmark in assessing AC OPF solvers, relaxations, etc. The efficiency of the proposed hiBDT method will be posed as an open issue requiring considerations of “hot starting” and how to effectively search the AC OPF feasible space. Lastly, the recursive variable bound tightening with hiBDT that progressively improves the dispatch cost will be discussed as a feature of the method to robustly price the commitment of renewables unaffected by their volatility.