Tag Archives: renewables

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.

 

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!

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.

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!

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.

News, Regional Editor IET RPG

Appointed Regional Editor at IET RPG Journal

January 2021

I am delighted to report that the Editor- and Deputy-Editor-in-Chief at the Institute of Engineering & Technology (IET) Renewable Power Generation (RPG) journal have appointed me Regional Editor of these publications for North America. I am humbled by the role and will work hard to promote the activities of the journal.

This appointment follows that of the Associate Editor in the same journal and on the subject of Hybrid Renewable Energy Systems, as of my expertise on Virtual Power Plants. Although, as you may know, I am senior member, volunteer and ‘big fan’ of the IEEE, I cannot contain my enthusiasm about how the IET RPG devotes a subject and editorial team on the broader subject of hybrid renewable energy systems, especially given the fact that virtual power plants (either including renewables or not) are on the rise (see OhmConnect, Enbala, SunRun, Enel X, Stem).

Please, contact me to propose Special Issues or for questions about submissions under the subject of Hybrid Renewable Energy Systems. I will be glad to help!