Technical Talk by Dr. Amristanshu Pandey, University of Vermont, USA

IEEE PES Student Branch Chapter, IISc has organized a technical talk on 3^rd August 2023 at 3 PM IST. Please find the talk details as below.

Title: Homotopy-based Circuit-theoretic Optimizations for Power Grids

Speaker: Dr. Amritanshu Pandey, University of Vermont, USA

Date and Time: 3^rd August 2023, 3 PM IST
Venue: MMCR Electrical Engineering Department, IISc, Bengaluru. 

Abstract: Optimizations are at the center of many power grid analyses. With rapid decarbonization and electrification, the scale and complexity of these optimizations are increasing. Current state-of-the-art tools for nonconvex optimization are not always robust at solving these emerging power grid problems. In this talk, I will discuss a novel domain-focused circuit-theoretic optimization method for power grids. In this approach, the first-order optimality conditions for an optimization problem are mapped into a set of equivalent circuits, the response for which represents a problem’s stationary point. As these equivalent circuits are large and highly nonlinear, we developed and used a novel homotopy method: Incremental Model Building (IMB). I will cover this homotopy in this talk and show that this method can also be extended to optimize for discrete control variables in the grid. I will conclude the talk by showing pertinent results and comparisons against a state-of-the-art method that won the recent ARPA-E grid optimization challenge.

Speaker Bio: Amrit Pandey is an Assistant Professor in the Electrical and Biomedical department at the University of Vermont with a courtesy appointment in the Electric and Computer Engineering and Engineering and Public Policy departments at Carnegie Mellon University. His overarching research goal is to develop electric energy system technologies to help combat climate change while modernizing the underlying system. In the past, he and his team developed a novel circuit-theoretic simulation and optimization framework for power grids. The project culminated in a new grid analytics tool: Simulation of Unified Grid Analysis and Renewables (SUGAR), which Pearl Street Technologies, Inc. has since commercialized. This work has won several best paper awards, including two best-of-the-best paper awards at IEEE PES General Meeting in 2017 and 2021. His current research focuses on developing computational methods that address problems in the space of large-scale grid simulation and optimization, grid cybersecurity, and energy inequity.