On the 3rd of July 2017, we will have the pleasure to host Mads Almassalkhi from University of Vermont.
He will talk to us about some recent venture he got into, i.e., packetized energy management.
The seminar will be held in building 325, room 113, at 11am.
Abstract:
This talk presents recent results on aggregating, coordinating, and integrating flexible distributed energy resources (DERs) into electricity grid operations and will focus on the patent-pending next-generation grid technology called Packetized Energy Management (PEM) for aggregating and coordinating DERs, such as electric water heaters, electric vehicles, electric batteries, and air-conditioners. PEM leverages concepts from the communication systems that enable millions of data files to be sent asynchronously across the internet under bandwidth constraints and adapts these concepts to DERs. For example, in the same way that a bulky data file gets split up into smaller data packets, PEM delivers an electric water heater’s energy need in multiple small "energy packets” over an extended duration rather than a single bulky delivery. This creates flexibility in demand and PEM takes advantage of that flexibility by placing a little bit of “packetizing” logic on a Wifi-enabled DER. This logic enables a packetized DER to request an energy packet from the demand aggregator, who can then choose to accept or deny the packet requests. By modulating the rate of accepting packet requests from a fleet of water heaters, the grid operator (or demand aggregator) can then dispatch the aggregate demand as if it was a conventional power plant or a large energy storage resource. With a locally randomized control policy at the device-level in PEM’s bottom-up framework, we overcomes complications with modeling and estimating the complex end-consumer usage patterns and can guarantee privacy for the end-consumer. The work presented is funded by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Program Agency - Energy (ARPA-E).
Bio:
Mads Almassalkhi is Assistant Professor in the Department of Electrical and Biomedical Engineering at the University of Vermont and co-founder of energy startup Packetized Energy Technologies. His research interests lie at the intersection of power systems, mathematical optimization, and control systems and focus on developing scalable algorithms that improve responsiveness and resilience of power systems. He was awarded the 2016 Outstanding Junior Faculty award by his college and the 2015 Young Engineer of the Year by IEEE PES Green Mountain Section. Prior to joining the University of Vermont, he was lead systems engineer at clean-tech startup company Root3 Technologies. In 2013, he received his PhD from the University of Michigan in Electrical Engineering (EE): Systems and his dual degree in EE and Applied Mathematics from the University of Cincinnati in 2008.