YINS/EE Seminar

“Advanced and Coordinated Inverter Control for a Secure Electrical Grid with High Penetrations of Renewables”

Speaker: Panayiotis (Panos) Moutis, PhD
Special Faculty with the Scott Institute for Energy Innovation at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU)

Abstract: The main reason an electrical grid collapses is the disruption of the generation-demand balance; i.e., not enough generation for all loads or no electrical paths (energy flow through wires) for that reason. Until recently, conventional energy sources that were spinning physical generator rotors, represented considerable inertia, which would limit the effects of generation-demand imbalances and keep them manageable by the system. As renewables have been steadily increasing and, thus, displacing conventional units, they have also been displacing the inertia of the latter, which the former cannot replace. This is because renewables are electromechanically decoupled from the grid through inverters or because they do not possess physical inertia in the first place. Moreover, the inverters themselves incorporate controls of varying time frames that may resonate with internal and grid impedances, thus, requiring appropriate tuning to damp oscillatory behaviors (at the very least). In the first part of this seminar, we discuss control methods that enable wind generators and photovoltaics to take up on the role of conventional resources in preserving the generation-demand balance. Results of real-world testing prove that the technology is mature and applicability is readily feasible. In the second part, we review the major concerns on the stability of an electrical grid with high penetrations of inverter-interfaced resources and how these concerns define a path of research for coordinated active control. As it will be demonstrated, the new control paradigm will require grid monitoring of high accuracy and time granularity of sub-second scale. We will conclude with a discussion on the challenges in the path forward for an inverter-dominated electrical grid.    

To participate:

Speaker bio: Panayiotis (Panos) Moutis, PhD, has been Special Faculty with the Scott Institute for Energy Innovation at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) since August 2018 (postdoc at Electrical & Computer Engineering, CMU, 2016-18). His recent grants include one from the national system operator of Portugal, REN, for the development of a transmission expansion planning platform, and another from the moonshot factory of Google, X, for the digital twin of the electrical grid. Between 2018-20 he served as a Marie Curie Research Fellow with DEPsys, Switzerland, on distribution grid synchronized measurements and state estimation. In 2014 he was awarded a fellowship by Arup UK (through the University of Greenwich), on the “Research Challenge of Balancing Urban Microgrids in Future Planned Communities”. In 2013 he won the “IEEE Sustainability 360o Contest” on the topic of Power. Throughout 2007-15, as part of Prof. Nikos Hatziargyriou’s research group he contributed to over a dozen R&D projects funded by the European Commission. Panos received both his diploma (2007) and his PhD (2015) degrees in Electrical & Computer Engineering at the National Technical University of Athens, Greece, and has published more than 30 papers and contributed to 5 book chapters. He has accumulated over 10 years of industry experience on projects of Renewable Energy Sources and Energy Efficiency, and serves in energy start-ups as advisor and executive. He is a senior member of multiple IEEE societies, member of the IEEE-USA Energy Policy Committee and NASPI, associate editor of IEEE & IET scientific journals, active contributor to IEEE standards working groups, chair of the IEEE Smart Grid Publications Committee and editor-in-chief of the “IEEE Smart Grid Newsletter”. Personal Website for more information: https://panay1ot1s.com/   

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