All posts by Panagiotis Moutis

Active distribution seminar at NYU, News

Seminar at NYU on Active Distribution Grids

October 2021

I am very grateful to Dr. Yury Dvorkin for honoring me with an invitation to offer an ECE seminar at the Tandon School of Engineering at NYU coming Thursday Oct. 28th! I will talk about how our interest in distribution systems has been revived and, especially, in the challenges these networks face on a daily basis. I will point out the deep-rooted technical issues that remain unresolved when operating a distribution grid and the problematic incentives that have failed to make all end-customers more active within them. The digital twin of distribution transformers for detecting grid faults and the value proposition of hybrid photovoltaic-battery systems behind the meter of residential end-customers are two of the proposals I will discuss to address the aforementioned concerns.

The seminar will be held remotely, but if you are NYU faculty, researcher or student, feel free to reach out to arrange some online meeting on that day/afternoon.

CfS at IEEE CFP-POWERENG 2022, News

Call for Papers at CPE-POWERENG 2022, Deadline Extended to April 11th

Last updated March 2022 (originally published October 2021)

Update: The submissions deadline to the 16th IEEE International Conference on Compatibility, Power Electronics and Power Engineering (CPE-POWERENG 2022) has been extended April 11th. To submit your work follow the link found here. You can read more details about topics of interest as also about the timeliness of the subjects of the conference in the following lines.

~*~

This is an important opportunity for Submitting Papers at the 16th IEEE International Conference on Compatibility, Power Electronics and Power Engineering 2022 (IEEE CPE-POWERENG 2022), which will be held in Birmingham June 29th to July 1st, 2022.  CPE-POWERENG 2022 is sponsored by the IEEE Industrial Electronics Society. In my role as Special Sessions Chair and given the recent surge in research and funding on the subject of low inertia grids, grids with high penetrations of inverter-interfaced resources and the efforts of the IEEE and other engineering institutions in establishing standards for such resources, we established 2 Special Sessions “Future-proof power electronic systems and control for residential microgrids” and “Advances in High Switching Frequency Power Converters for E-Mobility” (read more about them here). The conference website is now open at this link and the call for papers may be found here. We are expecting submissions on:

  • Power generation, transmission and distribution
  • Power electronics and applications
  • Smart grids technologies and applications
  • Renewable energies
  • Energy storage technologies
  • Distributed power generation systems communication, security and smart metering
  • Electrical machines and adjustable speed drives
  • Transport electrification
  • Electric mobility
  • Energy market
  • EMI and EMC issue

Many thanks to Dr. Pietro Tricoli at the University of Birmingham for honoring me with the role of the Special Sessions chair at this conference. Previous IEEE CPE-POWERENG events took place in 2021, 2020 and 2019.

Inverter Interfaced Renewables Seminar at Yale Oct. 13, News

Seminar at Yale on Inverter Control for Grids Rich in Renewables

October 2021

I am extremely lucky to have recently met and exchanged ideas and research aspirations with Prof. Leandros Tassiulas, chair of Electrical Engineering (EE) at Yale.  He has honored me with an invitation to offer a seminar to the Dept. of EE and the Institute for Network Science at Yale on October 13th. I will be presenting 2 of my earlier research works on control methods to procure active power reserves from wind generators and string photovoltaic inverters. Even though these technologies typically pursue maximum use of their aerodynamic and solar potential, respectively, they must also be able to support system stability. This becomes even more critical as renewable resources slowly dominate the grid and displace conventional resources that have until recently ensured stability. I will extend my previous results into the most recent research aspirations for a grid dominated by inverter-interfaced renewables and batteries and how such aspirations may be made possible.

The seminar will be virtual, but I will make myself available to all faculty, students & researchers at Yale, who would like us to talk before/after the seminar, so, please, do not hesitate to reach out!

Active distribution seminar at Stevens, News

Seminar at Stevens Institute of Technology on Improving Distribution System Operation

September 2021

I am humbled by Prof. Wu‘s invitation to offer a Research Seminar at the  Dept. of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Stevens Institute of Technology on November 17th. I will be discussing the criticalities in the operation, maintenance and development of the distribution systems in electrical grids. Even though widespread black-outs are infrequent, customers in the US and elsewhere still suffer service interruptions that add up to many hours per year. The reasons lie in the poor monitoring of the distribution system, the limited use cases for distributed generation and storage in practice, and the lack of any resilience proposition. I will go over some of my recent and past works on the digital twin of distribution transformers, improving voltage profiles along feeders and actively controlling behind-the-meter photovoltaics and batteries of residential customers for improving energy costs and reducing line congestion.

The seminar will be held remotely, but I will be delighted to meet virtually with any student, researcher or faculty at Stevens for a one-on-one before or after the seminar. Feel free to reach out to arrange it!

AI & ML seminar at RPI Sep. 29, News

Seminar at RPI on Power System Control with Machine Learning & Artificial Intelligence

August 2021

I want to thank Prof. Mona Mostafa Hella and Dr. Luigi Vanfretti, my friend and collaborator at the North American Synchrophasor Initiative (NASPI), for inviting me to offer a seminar at the Dept. of Electrical, Computer & Systems Engineering at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute on September 29th. I will review 2 of my works on generation control with machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI). I will start by discussing how to use top-down heuristically inducted binary decision trees of ML to actively control firm capacity by volatile resources operated (among others units) as a Virtual Power Plant. In the second part, I will present how voltage control can be modeled as a problem of classical mechanics physics; from there it can be solved as an AI implementation of the 2nd law of thermodynamics to redispatch active and reactive power generation. I plan to spark a discussion on conceiving new ML applications and AI models for power system operational control and monitoring.

The seminar will be virtual, but I will make myself available to all faculty, students & researchers of RPI, who would like us to talk before/after the seminar, so, please, do not hesitate to reach out!

News, PV-BSS seminar at OSU Nov. 10

Seminar at Ohio State University on residential PV & batteries

August 2021

I am grateful to my friend and collaborator at the IET Renewable Power Generation journal, Prof. Ramteen Sioshansi for kindly inviting me to offer a seminar at the Dept. of Integrated Systems Engineering at Ohio State University on November 10. I will talk about my earlier work at CMU on the Dept. of Energy SHINES project, on how batteries can allow residential end-customers to widely benefit from behind-the-meter photovoltaics. Reducing the costly effects of demand charges promises additional value to that of net-metering or self-consumption from photovoltaics, while the policy implications offer much food for thought on the role of utilities, cooperatives and/or microgrids.

Depending on the situation with COVID the seminar might be in-person, so follow me on Twitter & LinkedIn for updates.

2022 IET RPG Conference, News

11th IET International Renewable Power Generation Conference, 2022

Last Updated December 2021 (originally published August 2021)

Call for Papers (deadline Jan. 28t, 2022) – 2022 IET RPG Conference, London, UK

Initiatives, policy proposals, legislation and cheap capital have been defining the framework of a broad and accelerating shift towards cleaner infrastructure and processes in all sectors and aspects of society. The race to zero carbon emissions is on and organizations and consortia all around the world are bringing together experts, scholars, thought leaders and industry stakeholders to exchange views and inform each other about the what, how and when of new methods, new materials and new ideas. For the electricity sector, the shift to a future of generating fleets comprising almost exclusively of renewable energy sources (RES) is undoubted and brings about engineering challenges and policy hurdles.

The Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET) has one of the longest living journals about RES, titled Renewable Power Generation (RPG), first indexed in 2007. IET also holds a similarly named and themed conference. In its 11th instalment, the IET RPG conference seeks to answer the call to meet Net Zero Carbon future and invites all stakeholders to contribute with papers on how RES and the electricity sector as a whole can serve the most of their part towards this future.

The technical scope of the 11th IET RPG, 2022 includes:

  • Wind technology
  • PV systems technology
  • Grid integration, technologies, compliance and assessments
  • Other renewable energy sources
  • Battery and energy storage systems

Full details about the technical scope can be found here: https://rpg.theiet.org/author-information/technical-scope/

You may submit your one A4 page long abstracts here by January 28th 2022: https://app.oxfordabstracts.com/stages/2960/submitter All accepted and presented papers will be indexed in IET Inspec, IEEE Explore Digital Library and EI Compendex.