Day 1 of Design and Operation of Distributed Power Systems with Microgrids cours

This course will emphasize the use of distributed control, transactive energy, and microgrids as a way of managing the power system reliability, resilience, economics, and security. The large integration of renewable energy can offer a number of benefits in power system generation, transmission, distribution, and delivery including the fixed cost of electricity delivery, pollution free and often quiet sources of energy, supply of energy that is competitive with the cost of thermal energy, minimum contribution to green-house gases, and modular and expandable sources of electricity with minute T&D costs for resilience purposes.

In practice, microgrids are introduced to address the emergence of a large number of distributed energy sources in distribution systems which can ensure optimal operations of potentially islandable power grids. Microgrids allow customers to share the risk of supplying the critical loads with local utilities in return for receiving more reasonable electricity rates by using the transactive energy at peak hours. During main grid disturbances, microgrid can be transferred from grid-connected to island mode and an uninterrupted supply of consumer loads is offered by local generation resources. The islanded microgrid is resynchronized with the main grid once the disturbance is removed.

Considering the power system reliability (high probability/low impact events), electricity grid is often designed and operated under a given range of critical conditions and able to withstand credible contingencies. Traditionally, the main focus of reliability enhancement has been on N-1 and N-2 outages. However, low impact outages could potentially be followed by insufficient awareness or preparedness for resilience (i.e., low probability/high impact events). For instance, Hurricane Sandy in the United States was an N-90 contingency. At the same time the only sections of the power system in the eastern part of the United States that remained energized after Hurricane where the ones that were equipped with distributed systems and controllable microgrids. The widespread outages in the wake of such natural disasters cast light on the fact that the resilience cannot be ensured, but deterioration can often be controlled locally by microgrids at a tolerable level until full services are recovered at the large grid level.

At steady state, microgrids generate, distribute and regulate the flow of electricity to local customers, representing a modern small-scale power system with a high degree of flexibility and efficiency in both supply and demand sectors. Furthermore, microgrid applications promote the use of more efficient DC systems in which renewable resources (such as solar PV) are regarded as DC generation and demands (such as LED lights) are regards as DC loads.

The list of topics covered by this course is given on the following page. The course will commence by a review of electricity restructuring, discuss the use smart grid for introducing distributed operations, and conclude the subject by a review of smart grid applications for developing islandable microgrids, transactive energy, and distributed control of electric power systems.

Speaker - Dr. Mohammad Shahidehpour is the Bodine Chair Professor in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, Director of the Robert W. Galvin Center for Electricity Innovation, and Associate Director of Wanger Institute for the Sustainable Energy Research at Illinois Institute of technology (Illinois Tech). He is the Principal Investigator of $60 million grants and contracts on smart grid research and development. His federally funded project on Perfect Power Systems has converted the entire Illinois Tech Campus to an islanded microgrid. He has initiated CSMART (Center for Smart Grid Applications, Research, and Technology) at Illinois Tech for promoting the smart grid cybersecurity research and implementation and enhancing the resilience of wireless networked communication and control systems in smart cities. He is a member of SPIKE Center in the Stuart School of Business at Illinois Tech which is facilitating the design and the implementation of affordable microgrids in impoverished nations.

Dr. Shahidehpour was the 2009 recipient of the honorary doctorate from the Polytechnic University of Bucharest. He is the holder of Nourbakhshian Endowed Chair Professorship, University of Kashan, Iran, Otto Monsted Professorship, Technical University of Denmark, and Judd Distinguished Lectureship, at the University of Utah. He is a Research Professor at King Abdulaziz University (Saudi Arabia), Sharif University of Technology (Iran), as well as several universities in China including Tsinghua University, Xian Jiaotong University, Nanjing University, North China Electric Power University, and Hunan University.

Dr. Shahidehpour was the recipient of the IEEE PES Douglas M. Staszesky Distribution Automation Award, IEEE PES Outstanding Power Engineering Educator Award, IEEE PES T. Burke Hayes Faculty Recognition Award in Electric Power Engineering, the Edison Electric Institute’s Power Engineering Educator Award, the Innovation Award from the Association of Electrical Engineering Department Heads, and Outstanding Author Award from the Romanian Association of Engineers. 

Dr. Shahidehpour has co-authored 6 books and 460 papers on electric power system operation and planning. He was the recipient of 8 best paper awards for his IEEE publications. He served as the VP of Publications for the IEEE Power and Energy Society, Editor of IEEE Transactions on Power Systems, and the founding Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE Transactions on Smart Grid. He was a member of the United Nations Commission on Microgrid Studies.

Dr. Shahidehpour is an IEEE Fellow and a member of the US National Academy of Engineering.