Peter Palensky

Modeling Smart Grids

Abstract:
The smart grid is the ICT answer to the power challenges of tomorrow: flexible loads, active distribution grids, storage management, smart energy markets, and bidirectional power flows. Conceptually it is a distributed ICT and automation system that is amalgamated with the physical power infrastructure: a cyber-physical system, and even a system of systems. Designing, optimizing, running, and diagnosing such systems requires reliable and scalable computational models which leads us to the main problem with cyber-physical systems: hybrid models (discrete and continuous) are hard to deal with. There are, however, new and promising languages and methods to deal with such systems. This talk will introduce you into the challenges of describing such complex energy systems and show you how modern modeling methods can overcome the hurdles. Ultimately, such models are capable of covering technical constraints, economic drivers, and complex interactions in several magnitudes of time.

Biography:
Peter Palensky is full Professor and Chair of Intelligent Electric Power Grids at TU Delft. Before that he was Principal Scientist for complex energy systems and Head of Business Unit "Sustainable Building Technologies" at the Austrian Institute of Technology, CTO of Envidatec Corp., Hamburg, Germany, associate Professor at the University of Pretoria, South Africa, and researcher at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, California. His research field is complex energy systems and smart grids. In his research he models, (co-)simulates and optimizes heterogeneous cyber-physical energy systems. The areas of optimization are stability, robustness, efficiency and control of smart grids.