Complex Energy Systems
Michael Chertkov, Los Alamos National Laboratory, USA
Abstract:
Today’s energy systems, such as electric power grids and gas grids, already demonstrate complex nonlinear dynamics where, e.g., collective effects in one exert uncertainty and
irregularities on other. These collective dynamics are not well understood and are expected to become more complex tomorrow as the grids are pushed to reliability limits, interdependencies grow, and appliances become more intelligent and autonomous. Tomorrow’s will have to integrate the intermittent power from wind and solar farms whose fluctuating outputs create far more complex stress on power grid operations, often dependent, e.g. in providing fast regulation
control, on the gas supply. Conversely, one anticipates significant effect of the wind-following gas fired turbines on reliability of the gas grid. Guarding against the worst of those perturbations
will require taking protective measures based on ideas from optimization, control, statistics and physics.
In this talk we introduce a few of the physical, optimization and control principles and phenomena in today’s energy grids and those that are expected to play a major role in tomorrow’s grids.
We illustrate the new science of the energy grids on three examples: (a) discussing an efficient and highly scalable Chance Constrained Optimal Power Flow algorithm providing risk-aware
control of the power transmission system under uncertainty associated with fluctuating renewables (wind farms); (b) describing effect of the intermittent power generation on reliability and compression control of the gas grid operations; and (c) briefly discussing examples of interdependencies, reliability troubles and solutions in the low level (distribution) grids.
Biography: Dr. Chertkov's areas of interest include applied and theoretical problems in energy systems, hydrodynamics, statistical and mathematical physics, information theory and computer science. Dr. Chertkov received his Ph.D. in physics from the Weizmann Institute of Science in 1996, and M.Sc. in physics from Novosibirsk State University in 1990. After his Ph.D., Dr. Chertkov spent three years at Princeton University as a R.H. Dicke Fellow in the Department of Physics. He joined Los Alamos National Lab in 1999, initially as a J.R. Oppenheimer Fellow in the Theoretical Division. He is now a technical staff member in the same division. Dr. Chertkov is an APS fellow. He has published more than 100 papers in these research areas.
