Grant: Discovery Grants Program - Individual

Electric power grids are experiencing unprecedented pressure to modernize in recent years, driven by government policies, technology developments and social expectations. Key drivers for the change include (1) the emergence of large scale renewable energy sources, (2) increased public interest in energy efficiency and conservation, (3) high social expectations for resilient, reliable, and high quality electricity supply and (4) the advancement in information and computing technology. These developments have led to a series of research, development, and application activities, resulting in an industry-wide movement called “electric grid modernization”.Power quality, as an essential component of grid modernization, is facing similar challenges. For example, the grid is experiencing increased power disturbances due to renewable energy sources and energy efficient appliances. Yet systematic and efficient solutions to deal with such problems are still elusive. On the other hand, massive amount of disturbance data with a granularity as fine as multi-cycle waveforms have been collected. Industry is still searching for ways to make good use of the data. The proposed discovery grant program is designed to address such contemporary power quality issues and, more specifically, to develop innovative disturbance diagnosis and data analytics solutions. The envisioned program is composed of two main themes: (1) power quality disturbance diagnosis and (2) power disturbance data analytics. For the first theme, the program will investigate the power quality impact of mass adoption of energy efficient home appliances and distributed energy sources. It will focus on creating innovative troubleshooting techniques. For the second theme, a data analytics based framework to harvest information from power disturbance data will be developed. The goal is to establish a new form of situational awareness for modern power grids. Potential impact of this proposed program includes (a) reducing the negative power quality impact of energy efficient and renewable technologies, (b) improving industry standards on power quality, and (c) introducing a new platform for grid monitoring.