Distinguished Lecture Series

Jean-Yves Le Boudec

École Polytechnique Fédérale De Lausanne, Schweiz

17 May 2018, 04:15 pm

S2|02 Room C110, Robert-Piloty-Gebäude, Hochschulstr. 10, 64289 Darmstadt

“Real-Time Control of Electrical Distribution Grids”

Abstract

Very large amounts of renewable electricity generation, combined with a large penetration of plug-in electric vehicles, may cause considerable stress to the electrical grid. First, many distribution grids may face power quality problems such as over‐ and under‐ voltages and excessive line‐currents. Second, the existing reserve mechanisms that are required to maintain power balance at all times may not be able to cope with the high variability and uncertainty of renewables. These problems can be solved if we are able to control the huge number of electrical resources that are located in distribution grids, such as thermal loads, stationary batteries, charging stations and curtailable power generators. However, this poses a number of new challenges in terms of scalability and reliability. In this talk we discuss these challenges and how they can be addressed by innovative information technology solutions, which involve in particular a scalable and composable framework (COMMELEC) for the development of real‐ time control agents, together with solutions for active replication of real-time controllers (Axo. Quarts).

Bio

Jean-Yves Le Boudec is professor at EPFL and fellow of the IEEE. He graduated from Ecole Normale Supérieure de Saint-Cloud, Paris, where he obtained the Agrégation in Mathematics in 1980 and received his doctorate in 1984 from the University of Rennes, France. From 1984 to 1987 he was with INSA/IRISA, Rennes. In 1987 he joined Bell Northern Research, Ottawa, Canada, as a member of scientific staff in the Network and Product Traffic Design Department. In 1988, he joined the IBM Zurich Research Laboratory where he was manager of the Customer Premises Network Department. In 1994 he became associate professor at EPFL. His interests are in the performance and architecture of communication systems and smart grids. He co-authored a book on network calculus, which forms a foundation to many traffic control concepts in the internet, an introductory textbook on Information Sciences, and is the author of the book “Performance Evaluation”.