Abstract

Variable renewable energy integration and resilience to extreme events motivate the need for flexible resources in electric power systems. Distributed energy resources (DERs), such as electric vehicles and thermostatically controlled loads, provide an intriguing set of distributed assets to provide flexible services in power systems. However, leveraging populations of DERs are challenging because they are (i) large-scale, and (ii) involve discrete-valued control. This talk addresses modeling, estimation, and control for aggregations of DERs. Specifically, the talk is divided into two parts. First, we discuss a partial differential equation (PDE) approach to modeling and estimating aggregations of DERs. Second, we discuss a novel class of methods for controlling DER populations that are mathematically formulated as large-scale mixed integer programs. We call this class of methods “Hopfield methods”.

Biography

Scott Moura is an Associate Professor in Civil & Environmental Engineering and Director of the Energy, Controls, & Applications Lab (eCAL) at the University of California, Berkeley. He is also a faculty member at the Tsinghua-Berkeley Shenzhen Institute. He received the B.S. degree from the University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA, and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, in 2006, 2008, and 2011, respectively, all in mechanical engineering. From 2011 to 2013, he was a Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Cymer Center for Control Systems and Dynamics, University of California, San Diego. In 2013, he was a Visiting Researcher at the Centre Automatique et Systèmes, MINES ParisTech, Paris, France. His research interests include control, optimization, and machine learning for batteries, electrified vehicles, and distributed energy resources.

Dr. Moura is a recipient of the National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER Award, Carol D. Soc Distinguished Graduate Student Mentor Award, the Hellman Fellowship, the O. Hugo Shuck Best Paper Award, the ACC Best Student Paper Award (as advisor), the ACC and ASME Dynamic Systems and Control Conference Best Student Paper Finalist (as student and advisor), the UC Presidential Postdoctoral Fellowship, the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship, the University of Michigan Distinguished ProQuest Dissertation Honorable Mention, the University of Michigan Rackham Merit Fellowship, and the College of Engineering Distinguished Leadership Award.