Research

Today’s electric grid is rapidly evolving to provision for heterogeneous system components (e.g. intermittent generation, electric vehicles, storage devices, etc.) while catering to diverse consumer power demand patterns. In order to accommodate this changing landscape, widespread integration of cyber communication with physical components has infiltrated all tenets of the modern power grid. Devices that were typically passive in the traditional grid are now ‘smarter’ as these can respond to remote signals, learn about local conditions and even make their own actuation decisions if necessary. Unprecedented connectivity that is now possible especially in complex systems such as the power grid provides an elevated level of awareness and decision-making ability to system operators. These advantages can be leveraged to reap long-term benefits which include sustainable, efficient and/or economical grid operation. Thus, the modern power grid presents a vast variety of rich and rewarding research opportunities. As such, the following topics encompass my current research interests:

- Large-scale optimization in the smart grid
- Distributed control
- Sustainable generation integration
- Demand response coordination
- Power quality monitoring and localization of disturbances

Call for Papers:

Dr. Srikantha is a co-organizer of the Workshop on AI in Energy Systems that will be held in IEEE International Conference on Communications, Control, and Computing Technologies for Smart Grids. More information is available here.