Events and Seminars

SEMINAR

Integration of Emerging Technologies into the Power Grid

Ms. Jiankang Wang

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Date: Tuesday, April 30, 2013 at 11:00 a.m.

Conference Room 603, McConnell Engineering Building

Substantial technological challenges and opportunities confront the power industry as we move toward a smarter and more modern electric power system. A failure to realize these opportunities or meet these challenges could result in degraded reliability, significantly increased costs, and a failure to achieve several public policy goals. This presentation will demonstrate the methods and techniques for more efficient, reliable, and economical operation and construction of power systems given upcoming challenges and opportunities in renewable energy, distributed generation, demand side management, and reconfiguration.

In electricity markets, Demand Response (DR) and Variable Energy Resources (VERs) can cause increases in market operation costs, consequently, final energy price. In this presentation, a two-stage design scheme of forward electricity markets will be shown. Electricity markets constructed under the proposed design scheme can better integrate renewable energy with DR programs by minimizing the uncertainties induced from both DR and VERs.

In power grids, increasing penetration of Distributed Generation (DG) and requirements of end-user reliability raises the needs for revision of currently deployed operation and planning approach of power systems.  A method will be presented to visualize the interaction between DGs and feeders’ voltage profiles. This method can easily detect DG-induced overvoltage, therefore, allowing the avoidance of both system- and user-side equipment damage. In addition, the presentation will show a planning method to estimate the maximum utilization of transformers. The presented method differs from conventional supply-side reliability planning approach (N-1 approach) by considering customer reliability requirements and can be extensively applied to other power delivery equipment in distribution systems.

Biography: Ms. Jiankang Wang received her B.E. in Electrical Engineering and Automation from Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China in 2007 and M.S. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge in 2009. She is currently a Ph.D. candidate in Electrical Engineering at MIT. Her research focuses on electric power systems and the modern technological applications and concepts associated with them. These applications and concepts include renewable energy, distributed generation, demand side management, and reconfiguration, which are often summarized by, but are not limited to, the concept of the “Smart Grid.”