TEES researcher awarded $4.9 million grant for research
Dr.
Mladen Kezunovic, the Eugene E. Webb Professor in the electrical
and computer engineering department at Texas A&M University,
and his team received the $4.9 million dollar grant from ARPA-E for
their research on Robust Adaptive Topology Control (RATC).
Kezunovic, also a researcher with the Texas Engineering Experiment
Station (TEES) was among 14 Principal Investigators whose research
teams received a total of $156 million from the Department of
Energy's Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) for
their "cutting-edge research projects."
Increasing the use of renewable generation and avoiding cost
associated with mitigating the intermittency, blackouts and
brownouts, as well as mitigating malicious attacks is a goal across
the nation. Kezunovic's research will provide new methods for
controlling the power grid and associated electricity markets
during sudden interruptions caused by the intermittent availability
of non-dispatchable renewable generation (wind and solar),
cascading faults caused by extreme operating conditions and
malicious attacks
Their project provides robust adaptive topology
control that allows real-time transmission asset
switching to reconfigure or restore the topology of the grid in
response to random events with detrimental impacts. The new concept
uses an adaptive control strategy which will reduce the time to
correctly detect, classify and characterize the contingencies and
respond to mitigate problems in the power grid.
"These innovative projects are at the forefront of a new
technological frontier that plays a critical role in our future
energy security and economic growth, "said Arun Majumdar, Director
of ARPA-E in a press release. "It is now more important than ever
to invest in game-changing ideas that will build the technological
infrastructure for a new, clean energy economy."
Kezunovic said "the current ARPA-E award and two more
awards, one from the Department of Energy on smart outage
management for distribution systems, and the other from The
National Science Foundation for studying impact of electrical
vehicles on transportation and electricity convergence will enhance
the smart grid research portfolio that I would like to manage under
a Smart grid Center to further enhance visibility of TEES research
capabilities".
For more information about the ARPA-E awards, visit
http://arpa-e.energy.gov/media/news/tabid/83/vw/1/itemid/39/department-of-energy-awards-%24156-million-for-groundbreaking-energy-research-projects.aspx.