Speaker: Steven Low, F J Gilloon Professor, Department of Computing & Mathematical Sciences, Department of Electrical Engineering, California Institute of Technology

Host: Prof. You Pengcheng, Department of Industrial &  Management, College of Enginnering

Time: 10:00-11:30 am, April 29, 2022 (GMT+8)

Venue: Zoom meeting ID: 979 2013 3079 Passcode: 385693

Abstract:

Optimal power flow (OPF) problems are fundamental because they underly numerous power system operations. OPF is a nonconvex constrainedoptimization problem and is NP-hard. It is usually solved using local algorithms (such as Newton-Raphson) or convex relaxation methods, but neither guarantees globally optimal solutions. Even though OPF is hard in theory, it seems “easy” in practice in the sense that, empirically, both local algorithms and convex relaxation methods often yield global solutions. In this talk, we describe OPF and conditions for convex relaxations to be exact. Then,to help reconcile our empirical computational experienceand theoretical hardness of OPF, we present necessary or sufficient conditions for an OPF problem to both have exact relaxation and nospurious local optimal. Finally, we describe a smart electric vehicle (EV) charging infrastructure and an open-source testbed at Caltech. We formulate the problem of optimally coordinating a networkof EV chargers as a Quadratic Program, present some data from the deployment of our adaptive charging network (ACN). We describe the open-source ACN Research Portal that consists of large-scale EV charging data (ACN-Data),a realistic simulator (ACN-Sim), and the potential development of a real testbed (ACN-Live).

Biography:

Steven Low is the Gilloon Professor of the Department of Computing & Mathematical Sciences and the Department of Electrical Engineering at Caltech and Honorary Professor of the University of Melbourne, Australia.  He is an awardee of the IEEE INFOCOM Achievement Awardand the ACM SIGMETRICS Test of Time Award, and is a Fellow of the IEEE, ACM,and CSEE. He received his B.S. from Cornell and PhD from Berkeley, both in EE.
 
Source: College of Engineering