Power Networks Topology Control Software

SPRING 2015 RESEARCH INCUBATION AWARDEES 

Pablo Ruiz (Mechanical Engineering, College of Engineering) and Michael Caramanis (Mechanical Engineering, College of Engineering)

Electric power systems are often congested, leading to higher power costs (increases of $4-8 billion annually in the US), reliability problems and spillage of available wind and solar generation. With support from DOE ARPA-E, we have developed control technology to help grid operators more actively manage power flows and integrate renewables by optimally turning entire power lines on and off in coordination with traditional control of generation and load resources. Our technology could save between $1-2 billion in annual generation costs in the US, enable more renewable energy to be incorporated into the grid and increase system reliability.

In this project, we are re-structuring the research software prototype developed in our ARPA-E project following best practices for production grade software, and are developing a basic GUI to streamline the applicability of the resulting basic topology control tool.

This work is funded by a Hariri Research Award made in June, 2015.