If you have a background in math, science or engineering (or just a strong interest in these subjects), and you'd like to study and solve important problems in the electricity industry, the School of Engineering at the University of Vermont could be the place for you. The School of Engineering has a unique, complex systems focus that fits well with electricity industry studies. Paid research or teaching assistantships are available for qualified applicants. Send me an e-mail at if you would like more information. Also check out the information that is available on the School of Engineering web site.
Structural and electrical properties of bulk power networks
Recently many researchers are applying new tools in graph theory and complex systems to various engineering problems. While some have studied electricity networks from this perspective, most have looked only at the topology of these networks, neglecting the electrical properties as governed by Kirchoff's laws. In this project we are combining large data sets from actual power systems and recent tools from network analysis to find properties that are important to the robustness, security and efficiency of electricity delivery systems.
Collaborator: Seth Blumsack, Pennsylvania State University.
The video at the right shows that we can apply these metrics to the problem of finding tightly connected clusters of buses within an electrical power network. The video shows the progress of a genetic algorithm over time.
Coordinating the actions of agents in electricity networks
The electricity industry worldwide is changing. Concerns about climate change are driving major changes the energy supply mix, as evidenced by growing investment in wind power worldwide. Investment and interest in distributed generation is increasing. Power electronics are changing the dynamics of the grid. And demand for reliable, affordable electricity continues to grow. The result is an increasingly complex system with increasingly unpredictable dynamics. Controlling these dynamics is the responsibility of millions of human and non-human agents. In the past the non-human agents, such as relays, governor and exciter controls acted only with local information, and it was the responsibility of human operators to ensure that all of the agents behaved well along longer time scales. Changes to the grid make this an increasingly difficult task for humans. Coordinating the actions of these agents will require new approaches to cooperation among software agents that can act quickly and humans that act with longer time-delays. This project seeks to develop cooperation methods for software and human agents interacting with electricity networks, considering the complex dynamics of the physical infrastructure and the changing nature of the electricity industry.
The impact of large-scale wind power deployment in the United States
Electrical energy from wind is potentially one of the most affordable of existing low-carbon electrical energy resources. But the wind does not always blow, resulting in power output that is irregular at best. In this project we are seeking to figure out the impact of large-scale wind deployment on frequency in the US Eastern Interconnect, and determine how this would affect regulation costs.
Collaborator: Jay Apt, Carnegie Mellon University.
Plug-in hybrid electric vehicles in Vermont
In collabration with the UVM transportation center we are seeking to gather data from plug-in hybrid electric vehicle usage in the Burlington area. Collaborator: Richard Watts.
if you would like more information. Also check out the information that is available on the School of Engineering web site.
