Pirathayini
Srikantha,
Department
of
Electrical
and
Computer
Engineering
Western
University
Rapid advancements in smart grid technologies have brought about the proliferation of intelligent and actuating power system components such as distributed generation, storage and smart appliance units. Capitalizing fully on the potential benefits of these systems for sustainable and economical power generation, management and delivery is currently a significant challenge due to issues of scalability, intermittency and heterogeneity of the associated networks. In particular, vertically-integrated and centralized power system management is no longer tractable for optimally coordinating these diverse devices at large scale while also accounting for the underlying complex physical grid constraints.
To address these challenges, we propose a hierarchical signal processing framework for optimal power flow management whereby the cyber-physical network relationships of the modern grid are leveraged to enable intelligent decision-making by individual devices based on local constraints and external information. Decentralized and distributed techniques based on convex optimization and game theoretic constructs are employed for information exchanges and decision-making at each tier of the proposed framework. It is shown via theoretical and simulation studies that our technique allows for the seamless integration of power components into the grid with low computational and communication overhead while maintaining optimal, sustainable and feasible grid operations.
Bio: Dr. P. Srikantha is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Western University. She received her B.A.Sc. degree in Systems Design Engineering from the University of Waterloo in 2009 and her M.A.Sc. degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the same institute in 2013. She obtained her Ph.D. degree from The Edward S. Rogers Sr. Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Toronto in 2017. She is a certified Professional Engineer (P.Eng.) in Ontario.
Her main research interests are in the areas of large-scale optimization and distributed control for enabling adaptive, sustainable and resilient power grid operations. Her work has been published in premier smart grid journal and conference venues. Her research efforts have received recognitions that include the best paper award (IEEE Smart Grid Communications) and runner-up best poster award (ACM Women in Computing). She is also actively involved in professional and social activities. She has served as the Session Chair and Technical Program Committee member in IEEE conferences. She is a reviewer in numerous IEEE transactions journals.