Optimal power flow reformulations for secure integration of renewables

The increasing penetration of renewables and distributed energy resources across the power system is increasing the system uncertainty and hence operational challenges are introduced. The transmission system operator faces every day a decision-making problem with regards to many controllable set-points in the network. The decision-making algorithms could incorporate the introduced uncertainty in a robust way, but this will most likely result in a very expensive system operation. On the other hand, by using heuristically chosen certain scenario cases of the uncertainty, solutions may not ensure the reliability of the system. In this context, chance constrained OPF reformulations of transmission system operational problems can prove an effective approach to achieve an optimal cost and a desirable reliability. In particular, to solve the chance-constrained OPF problems, the talk will discuss the use of data-based optimization techniques that do not rely on the underlying distribution of the uncertainty and provide a solution that comes along with probabilistic guarantees. Furthermore, policy-based control of different network components will be introduced to achieve improvement in the operational costs but also make the data-based optimization applicable. The talk will show that the proposed framework offers a solution that quantifies the system reliability probabilistically while decreasing the operating costs by taking advantage of the potential flexibility of the network.

Format:

• 2 pm – Introduction by Dr Elizabeth Ratnam, Future Engineering Research Leader and Research Lead with the Battery Storage and Grid Integration Program, Australian National University.
• 2.05 pm – Presentation by Dr Maria Vrakopoulou, lecturer in power systems, University of Melbourne.
• 2.35 pm – Audience Q&A.
• 2.50 pm – Close.

About the speaker

Dr Maria Vrakopoulou joined the University of Melbourne as a lecturer in power systems in 2018. She received her degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of Patras, Greece in 2008, and her Ph.D. degree from ETH Zurich, Switzerland in 2014. She pursued her post-doctoral research at the University of Michigan and at the University of California, Berkeley in the USA, and then back at ETH Zurich. She was awarded a highly prestigious three-year Marie Curie post-doctoral fellowship. Her research is driven by the need to address climate change through reliable and equitable energy distribution using sustainable resources.