All posts by Panagiotis Moutis

Appointed Energy & Power Co-Lead CCAI, News

Power & Energy Community Co-Lead at the CCAI

Aug. 2022

It gives me immense joy to announce that I have joined the core team of the Climate Change AI (CCAI) organization. I will be serving the role of Power & Energy Community Co-Lead, alongside the tireless, devoted and unimaginably energetic CCAI’s co-founder, Dr. Priya Donti,

CCAI has identified climate change as the humankind’s most imminent existential threat, affecting primarily those who are underprivileged – communities of color, impoverished, without access to advanced technology and modern infrastructure. Within CCAI it is also understood that the climate change is a multi-faceted problem, at varying scales and with unique nuances across different sectors. In this sense, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the computational tools, approaches and frameworks it brings to the table represent the means to implement the coordinated and demanding efforts required to address this threat. However, with AI’s meteoric rise, its adverse impacts come also into scope within a world that attempts strides towards a fairer, more inclusive and more equitable environment and society. CCAI seeks to be the organization that brings together researchers, engineers, entrepreneurs, policy and decision makers, and all stakeholders from the public and private sectors to promptly and consistently create the community, educate the society, inform the infrastructure planning and serve as the global forum that will put AI to the service of climate change mitigation for the sake of each and every life on the planet.

My first couple of weeks within CCAI have been absolutely amazing. The organization has shown immense attention to detail, there are multiple outcomes of hard and coordinated work, the processes are defined clearly and the roles are crisp. Having being part of many volunteer and non-profit organizations for the past 15 years of my work on renewable energy research, CCAI is among the very few that have been so meticulously designed and operated. Combining this with the CCAI’s community’s passion for the cause, the members’ unwavering work ethic since the organization was first rolled out in 2019 and all the plans already in motion across multiple venues, I am certain that CCAI heads out to build and inspire many great accomplishments in this space! If you are reading these lines, you should definitely reach out and engage with the CCAI.

I want to thank from the bottom of my heart Dr. Priya Donti, Marcus Voss, Raphaela Kotsch, Dr. Kasia Tokarska, Dr. Evan Sherwin and the many other CCAI team members for the warm welcome. Let’s do this!

Inertia and Frequency Control by RES at UNIFI Sep. 19, News

Inertia Emulation & Frequency Control at the UNIFI Fall 2022 Seminar Series

August 2022

I am sincerely grateful to the many wonderful colleagues at the UNIFI consortium for having me present my older work on methods to emulate inertia and perform frequency control with wind and photovoltaic generators. My seminar is scheduled on Monday Sep. 19th at 4 pm ET, as part of the Fall 2022 Seminar Series (more information here).

The UNIFI project aims to conduct advanced research, design testing and develop standards on grid-forming inverters. Inverters are the power electronics devices that enable the efficient connection of many renewables to the electrical grids. With the gradual replacement of conventional units by renewables, the roles of the former pass on to the latter. “Grid-forming” is the functionality necessary to establish and maintain a standardized three-phase alternating current that serves some load demand. Inverters have been typically able to perform “grid-forming” at limited off-grid scales, but are now expected to expand it at the level of large interconnected grids.

Typical stages of Load-Frequency Control (LFC) in power systems

In my seminar I will focus mostly on the side of the sources, specifically wind and photovoltaic energy. Traditionally, these generators have been operated on strategies of maximum power absorption. Even though these strategies optimize the use of renewable sources, they are inflexible when load demand varies or the generation from other resources fluctuates. In fact, due to electricity physics any generation-demand imbalance, reflects to changes in the electrical frequency of the alternating currents; this change of frequency can control generators to respond to the load-generation imbalances. With wind and photovoltaic generators at maximum power absorption, responding to frequency signals that requires them to contribute additional power is impossible; hence, the requirement to procure reserves arises. I will review the methods, challenges, some results of real-world testing and expand on how grid-forming functionalities might be affected by inertia emulation and frequency control by wind and photovoltaic units.

JEPE Special Issue on protection in 0 carbon grids, News

Special Issue at the Intl. Journal of Electrical Power & Energy Systems

June 2022

I am kindly inviting you all to submit your works to the Special Issue on “Novel Protection and Control Methodologies towards Electrical Grids with Net-Zero Carbon Emissions” at the International Journal of Electrical Power and Energy Systems of the Elsevier publications. Here is the link to the call for papers. You may submit your novel contributions (full manuscripts) starting July 1st and by 30 Sep, 2022, on any of the following subjects:

  • Online/real-time monitoring and situational awareness solutions (detection and location of system oscillation, fault level monitoring and quantification, inertia measurement, etc.),
  • Analyzing and characterizing fault behavior and the novel protection strategies and solutions,
  • Converter control-based solutions to support protection operation,
  • Electrical grid design and assessment for robust point of common coupling impedance behavior,
  • New coordinating control solutions,
  • Methods for assessment of resilience,
  • New protection and control solutions during extreme weather/operating conditions and
  • New ICT technologies for protection.

I am grateful to my friend Dr. Qiteng Hong (University of Strathclyde, Glasgow), as also, Dr. Botong Li (Tianjin University), who are the Guest EiCs of this special issue and kindly invited me to serve with them on the editorial board. You may contact me for any additional details for works you would like to submit.

News, Power & Energy at 2022 IEEE WF IoT

Power & Energy Vertical Track at the 2022 IEEE World Forum on Internet of Things

May 2022

I am sincerely excited to co-chair the Power & Energy Vertical Track at the 2022 IEEE World Forum on Internet-of-Things (WF IoT), in Yokohama, Japan, coming November. I have happily chaired the same track in the last installment of the WF and I look forward to putting together multiple sessions of researchers and experts on all things (“Internet of… things” – see what I did there?) energy and power systems.

My track co-chair Sérgio Ivan Lopes, Technology and Management School of the Polytechnic Institute of Viana do Castelo (ESTG-IPVC), and I will be reaching out to many of you who can contribute to the subjects of interest. The contributions may also be remote/online. A paper track is planned, too, and I will be updating this announcement with submission and deadline details soon.

If you want to nominate yourself or someone you know as a contributor to the Energy & Power Vertical Track of the 2022 IEEE WF on IoT, please reach out. I will be delighted to have you!

Appointed Co-Lead NASPI DisTT, News

Appointed co-lead of NASPI Distribution Task Team

May 2022

I am particularly happy and honored to join Daniel Dietmeyer from San Diego Gas & Electric in leading the Distribution Task Team (DisTT) at the North American Synchro Phasor Initiative (NASPI).

NASPI was founded in 2003 as the Eastern Interconnection Phasor Project, it is funded by the US Dept. of Energy, and is supported by the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) and the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI). It is the largest collaboration of academics, industry practitioners and standardizing bodies for the development, use, understanding and promotion of methods and technologies based on synchronized measurements of voltage and current waveforms in power systems. These measurements with granularity of at least 30 per second and which are time synchronized via satellite across large grids, allow us to better analyze and control the stability and the security of the electrical grid.

Within the framework of DisTT, synchronized measurements enable the detection of faults, increase of hosting capacity of renewables, monitoring equipment health and others functions. At the current stage, DisTT focuses on the medium voltage beyond the substation.

This great opportunity and responsibility could not have been possible without the mentorship, support and inspiration that Sascha von Meier from UC Berkeley has gracefully offered me. I take over her role in leading DisTT in the hopes I can achieve half of what she did! Also, many thanks to Jeff Dagle (PNNL and chair of NASPI) for welcoming me on board.

 

Appointed IET RPG SS Editor, News, Uncategorized

Appointed Special Issues Editor at the IET RPG

March 2022

I am thrilled to announce that the Editors in Chief of the IET Renewable Power Generation (RPG) journal, Prof. Infield and Prof. Tricoli, have invited me to serve as the inaugural Special Issues Editor for this publication. I assume this role immediately and further to those of the Regional Editor for North America and Associate Editor on the subject of Hybrid Renewable Energy Systems for the same Open Access (OA) journal. It is particularly indicative of the Institute’s priorities that this is only the second IET publication in the field of energy and electrical power systems that is assigned with a Special Issues Editor.

Since the decarbonization of the energy sector is an aim long-overdue and  particularly complicated, it requires the mobilization of several stakeholders in the academia, the industry and among the decision and policy makers. The role and the positioning of the IET RPG in this discussion is central in bringing stakeholders together as authors, reviewers and adopters of publications disseminating how renewable energy at the microscopic and macroscopic levels can fulfill the clean energy transition.

In my role as Special Issues Editor, I will be soliciting, organizing, overseeing, editing and managing thematic calls for papers at the intersection as also the periphery of IET RPG topics, supporting their Guest Editors and attracting prospective Authors. For those of you who know me, understand that my involvement will be hands-on, the Special Issues will be appropriately curated, and that the Guest Editors will have the full support of the RPG journal staff and the IET organization. I urge you to contact me with ideas and proposals, even though I will also be reaching out to many of you.

As I have stated previously, OA to the concepts and results of academic and industrial R&D is the corner-stone of promoting and disseminating crucial ideas and important scientific results in the times of urgent calls to action. In my view, the OA publications by the IEEE and the IET have been serving  this mission with respect to the Authors and their work at the highest level of quality and with a dedicated pursuit for academic excellence. I am very proud to serve publications for both the IEEE and the IET!

IEEE TPWRS paper on fire-detecting digital twin of overhead line, News

IEEE TPWRS Paper on Digital Twin of Overhead Lines for Fire Detection

March 2022

Extending some of my previous work, I developed a digital twin for overhead conductors that detects an approaching forest fire and de-energizes the affected lines in a timely manner and not preemptively. The work has just been accepted in the IEEE Transactions on Power Systems (preprint here).

In California (CA) and elsewhere, the risk of overhead conductors igniting forest fires or adding seats to on-going ones is very real and extensive. In CA, PG&E’s overhead conductor equipment was determined to be the reason for the 2018 Camp fire, leading to law suits that caused the utility’s bankruptcy. After restructuring, the company updated its practices with preemptive disconnections of large parts of its grid during days of high risk of fire. The new practice disrupted service to thousands of customers, in most cases unnecessarily. Hundreds of new suits threatened PG&E with a second bankruptcy in 3 years.

Phasor Measurement Units (PMUs) have been widely adopted across grids. PMUs may be installed along a line in distances as close as a 1-2 miles in between. This gives rise and basis to the idea of real-time monitoring of line impedance for any reasons of variation. As resistance increases with ambient temperature (not proportionally), steep decreases in the inductance/resistance ratio (tangent of the impedance phasor – tanδ in the figure) of an overhead conductor may indicate that a forest fire burns near said conductor and it should, thus, be disconnected.

Behavior of moving average of impedance phasor as a forest fire approaches an overhead conductor and affects its resistance. Such a behavior should control the disconnection of this conductor.

The in silico testing under numerous worst case scenario conditions (no solar heating effect, broad measurement error intervals, synchronization errors, etc.), showed that the proposed method detects some cases of a forest fire approaching a conductor, in sub-second times and at extremely low false positive rates. In the next steps, I plan a collaboration with interested utilities and the US Forest Service for field testing.

I want to thank CMU ECE’s MSc student (at that time) and co-author Uday Sriram for his help in setting up the tests, Dan Dietmeyer from SDG&E for informing me about PMU deployments in CA, Farnoosh Rahmatian from NuGrid Power for lending his expertise on instrument transformers and Jeff Dagle from PNNL for his crucial comments in the earlier stages of this work.

News, PMUs and Inverters Panel IEEE SGSMA 2022

Panel on Synchrophasors in Zero Inertia Grids at the IEEE SGSMA 2022

February 2022

I am grateful to the Technical Program chairs of the 2022 IEEE International Conference on Smart Grid Synchronized Measurements and Analytics (SGSMA 2022) for accepting our panel proposal titled “Towards a Zero Inertia Grid thanks to Synchrophasor Measurements”. I have been delighted to have Prof. Yilu Liu (University of Tennessee at Knoxville), Dr. Evangelos Farantatos (EPRI),  Dr. Deepak Ramasubramanian (EPRI, on behalf of UNIFI), Dr. Qiteng Hong (University of Strathclyde, Glasgow) and Dr. Krish Narendra (Electric Power Group) accept my invitations to join this panel and contribute their expertise and experiences on the matter.

What we will be talking about revolves around how the electrical grid shifting to renewables and batteries, entails the shift to resources interfacing with the power system via power electronics – inverter, rectifiers and converters. As these devices and the sources they interface are characterized by fast dynamics, the traditional control paradigm followed to the day cannot suffice. The reason is that the phenomena that used to span seconds (thanks to large rotating inertias of conventional generators), will now be unfolding in milliseconds. Hence, the operators’ response times in the control rooms will be very limited. Thankfully, synchrophasors and the applications they enable can match these time-frames and allow for the transition to a new control paradigm.

I look forward to the conference and hope to be attending it in person in the beautiful town of Split in Croatia.

Blog, Electrical Grid Digital Twin

Digital Twins of Electrical Grid Assets

January 2022

A few months ago, my work with Omid Mousavi from DEPsys SA on the Digital Twin of the Medium Voltage side of a Distribution Transformer based on Low Voltage side measurements was published in the IEEE Transactions on Power Delivery (preprint). I have been getting numerous hits on that paper plus some invitations for collaboration, so I thought I should blog a few thoughts about the subject a bit more broadly.

Let me start by describing the idea of this specific publication first. We want to monitor harmonics and system faults with adequate accuracy and, preferably, in real time throughout an electrical grid. However, medium and high voltage  measurement equipment is costly and might require network disruptions to be installed.  Using measurements on the lower voltage side of transformers (T/F) – LV for distribution T/F and MV for substation T/F – and relying on a model of its operation can answer both challenges, while serving the monitoring purposes. As you may read in the paper, the MV side behavior of a distribution T/F may be captured through LV measurements with the delay of a mere sample step (e.g. 0.2 ms at 5 kHz rate). Talk about real-time, right?

The bigger picture is that digital twins are purpose-driven. We define the needs of monitoring a phenomenon or range thereof, any challenges in the process, and engineer the infrastructure and the models required in that framework. The essence of digital twins lies in their ability to respond to real-time inputs and adjust the depiction of the asset or phenomenon in real-time, too. Some might say that they resemble a feedback control system, but for the purpose of monitoring.

The term “real-time” here though, is tricky. If the scope of the monitoring is electrical phenomena (e.g. transient faults), then the term implies sub-second detail. On the other hand, if the purpose is equipment ageing, then granularity of months might suffice. That been said, it is the subtext of real-time which is actually more important. The user or control process relying on the digital twin must be informed in-time to act upon the information. In the case of a T/F suffering an uncleared single phase fault to ground, there is a system operator or local utility that must respond and restore full operational capacity after the fault has occurred, yet fast enough. If the insulation of a breaker is nearing its replacement time, a few days (at least) of advance notice are necessary to plan maintenance actions.

At the moment, I am considering another digital twin for overhead transmission lines that are approached by a forest fire and must get disconnected in time. Unlike, the distribution T/F digital twin, the electrical model was not sufficient for the purpose and needed to be enhanced with additional details that made it ever more challenging and interesting. Still it seems to be able to detect the forest fire in sub-second times, thus meeting the monitoring purpose. I hope to be telling you more about it soon.

AI & ML seminar at Stanford Feb. 24, News

Seminar at Bits & Watts (Stanford) on Machine Learning & AI for Power Systems

January 2022

I am very excited with Dr. Liang Min‘s invitation to present my Smart Grid works on power system control with machine learning and artificial intelligence in the framework of the Bits & Watts Initiative at Stanford! The seminar will take place on Feb. 24th and I will go over the use of top-down heuristically inducted binary decision trees to procure firm capacity by renewables with volatility, and on how voltage control can be modeled as a problem of classical mechanics physics. I look forward to hearing attendees’ ideas and thoughts on other machine learning and AI applications in power system optimization, planning and control.

The seminar will be in-person, so if you are faculty, student & researcher at Stanford and would like us to meet before/after the seminar, please, do not hesitate to reach out!