Plenary Speakers – SEST 2024 – International Conference on Smart Energy Systems and Technologies 2024

SEST 2024 will host the following Plenary Speakers:

Tuesday 10 September 2024:
- Javier Contreras – University of Castilla – La Mancha (UCLM), Spain – Incentives for electric vehicle integration in electrical distribution systems
Wednesday 11 September 2024:
- Andy Knight – University of Calgary, Canada – Data Informed DER Integration
- Costas Vournas – National Technical University of Athens, Greece – Voltage Stability Monitoring and Security Control using Distributed Resources
Thursday 12 September 2024:
- João P. S. Catalao – University of Porto, Portugal – Demand Response Implementation: Past Developments and Future Perspectives

Incentives for electric vehicle integration in electrical distribution systems

The use of electric vehicles (EVs) is increasing to address emerging concerns about global warming associated with emissions from fossil fuels. Besides, in the context of parcel delivery related to e-commerce, EVs are becoming an alternative to conventional fossil fuel technology. The EVs charging process implies the interdependence between the transportation and electric power systems. To address these issues, we present a multistage optimization-based approach that allows linking delivery routing and aggregated demand management in the transportation and electric power systems, respectively. An EV demand aggregator is used to guarantee the synergy between systems. Incentives are included to motivate electric vehicles to remain at charging intersections. However, attractive incentives can create electric power system congestion due to simultaneous charges on nodes. Thus, an iterative decongestion methodology is developed. The resulting model is divided into three stages: delivery allocation, delivery routing for each independent EV, and optimal energy management by the EV demand aggregator. Numerical results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed model on a real 284-intersection map with a set of 100 electric vehicles, showing that incentives allow electric vehicle demand aggregator to achieve cost savings of 8.5%.

Biography

Javier Contreras received the B.S. degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Zaragoza, Zaragoza, Spain, in 1989, the M.Sc. degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Southern California, Los Angeles, in 1992, and the Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1997. Since 1998 he has been with the University of Castilla – La Mancha (UCLM), Ciudad Real, Spain, where he is currently Full Professor. Dr. Contreras has also been a visiting scholar at the University of Hong Kong and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He has been a consultant for several electricity companies in Spain and has participated as principal investigator in national, European and international research projects. In particular, he was part of the European project Singular (https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/106012/en) devoted to the introduction of renewable generation in smart distribution grids. He has also been part of the evaluation committee of international research projects in the European Commission, Spain, Portugal, Italy, the Netherlands, Cyprus, Argentina, and Colombia.

Dr. Contreras has focused his research towards a broad cross-disciplinary program in the area of price forecasting, electricity markets, renewable energy and operation and planning of electrical power systems. Within electricity markets he has focused on their mathematical modeling, including both technical and economic issues as well as risk measures for power producers. Issues such as uncertainty, stochastic programming, price forecasting, real options and other methodologies have been addressed by him. Within the field of renewable energy, Dr. Contreras has analyzed control strategies for stand-alone renewable energy systems with hydrogen storage, design of grid connected PV systems considering electrical, economic and environmental aspects, optimal contract pricing of distributed generation in distribution networks and risk assessment of wind power generation project investments based on real options.

Dr. Contreras is an active member of IEEE Power and Energy Society (PES) as part of the Electricity Market Economics and the System Economics Subcommittees, among others. He reviews papers for many international conferences and journals, such as IEEE Transactions on Power Systems, Energy Policy, Energy Economics, and others. He has received the Best Paper Award at the IEEE International Conference on Smart Energy Grid Engineering — SEGE’15, Oshawa, Canada, August 17-19, 2015: N.G. Paterakis, A.A. Sánchez de la Nieta, J.P.S. Catalão, A.G. Bakirtzis, A. Ntomaris and J. Contreras, Evaluation of Load-following Reserves for Power Systems with Significant RES Penetration considering Risk Management. He is editor of IEEE Transactions on Power Systems, IEEE Transactions on Smart Grid, IEEE Transactions on Sustainable Energy, IEEE Power Engineering Letters, IEEE Open Access Journal of Power and Energy and IET Renewable Power Generation and has been Guest Editor of IEEE Transactions on Smart GridSpecial Issue on “Real-Time Demand Response”, IEEE Transactions onSustainable Energy Special Issue on “Reserve and Flexibility for Handling Variability and Uncertainty of Renewable Generation, IEEE Journal on Selected Topics in Signal Processing Special Issue on “Signal and Information Processing for Critical Infrastructures” and IET Renewable Power GenerationSpecial Issue on “Demand Side Management and Market Design for Renewable Energy Support and Integration”. He is Fellowof IEEE.

Andy Knight
Department of Electrical and Software Engineering
University of Calgary, Canada

Data Informed DER Integration

This presentation will address some of the approaches to support integration of distributed energy resources through data and AI tools. Applications include energy storage and from renewables, from microgrids to large systems. Data analysis, advanced models and AI are capable of significantly impacting the performance of DER and associated systems, from technical and economic perspectives and also as tools to inform policy makers. The presentation will review recent advances in the field, and provide examples of specific case studies based in Canada.

Biography

Andy Knight is Professor at the Department of Electrical and Software Engineering at the University of Calgary, with research interests in electrical energy systems, energy conversion and clean and efficient energy utilization. Dr. Knight is a P.Eng. registered in the Province of Alberta, Canada. He is the recipient of an IEEE PES Prize Paper Award and three paper awards from IEEE IAS. He is the President of IEEE IAS for 2024-2025 and has previously held the roles of Steering Committee Chair of IEEE ECCE and IEEE IEMDC, and Chair of IEEE Smart Grid R&D Committee. He is a Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Engineering.

Voltage Stability Monitoring and Security Control using Distributed Resources

Overview of Global vs Local Voltage Instability Detection approaches including a critical review of Impedance matching based methods and their limitations. Principles of the New LIVES Index (NLI) based on local measurements at a transmission corridor, with validation using a historical voltage collapse incident and application for on-line stability monitoring at the Control Center of the Hellenic System. In case of an approaching instability or insufficient security margin, distributed resources in a power system can provide significant support. An emergency control approach, as well as a method based on flexibility region determination of an Active Distribution Network and maximization of security margin making use of this flexibility will be presented.

Biography

Costas Vournas is Professor Emeritus in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering of National Technical University of Athens, Greece. He has published 200 papers in International Journals and Conferences and has co-authored the book “Voltage Stability of Electric Power Systems”. His research interests are in the area of power system dynamics, stability and control and include voltage stability monitoring and security analysis, renewable generation integration in power systems, and novel control applications for distribution and transmission systems. Fellow of IEEE (2005) and member of CIGRE. He received the IEEE/PES Prabha Kundur Award in 2019. He served as Region 8 Representative on the IEEE Power and Energy Society (PES) Governing Board (2011-2014). He is currently Chair of PES Greece Chapter, Past Chair of IEEE/PES Power Tech Steering Committee (2007-2019), and Past Chair of the IEEE/PES Power Systems Dynamic Performance Committee. Since 2021 he is Chairing the Energy WG of the IEEE European Public Policy Committee (EPPC) and is member of EPPC. Starting 2024 he serves as the Secretary of the Technical Council of IEEE PES.

Demand Response Implementation: Past Developments and Future Perspectives

The Clean Energy for all Europeans package and the European Green Deal both put the consumers at the centre of the European Union’s energy system. Under the REPowerEU Plan, the European Commission reinforced the need to effectively allow consumers to become fully-fledged actors in the energy market. Digitalisation could make it easier for consumers to invest in energy transition, also enabling consumers to actively participate in demand response programs. Demand response is becoming increasingly important to allow for a larger penetration of variable renewables, simultaneously ensuring more flexibility and more resilience. This invited lecture addresses past developments and future perspectives of demand response implementation, from several theoretical breakthroughs to real-life cases, aiming to increase consumer empowerment.

Biography

João P. S. Catalão is a Full Professor (“Professor Catedrático”) at the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Porto, Portugal. He is an IEEE Fellow and a Highly Cited Researcher in the field of Engineering. He is among the Top 2% of Scientists and a Best Scientist in Research.com. He was the Primary Coordinator of the 5.2-million-euro FP7-EU project SiNGULAR, 2012-2015. Currently, he is the Primary Coordinator of the 4.5-million-euro Horizon-EU project EU-DREAM, 2024-2027. He has coauthored more than 500 journal publications, with an h-index of 99 and more than 37,000 citations (according to Google Scholar), having supervised more than 130 researchers (post-docs, Ph.D. and M.Sc. students, and other students with project grants). He was the General Chair of SEST 2019 (technically co-sponsored by IEEE), after being the inaugural Technical Chair and co-founder of SEST 2018. He was the Editor of two CRC Press Books: “Electric Power Systems: Advanced Forecasting Techniques and Optimal Generation Scheduling” (2012) and “Smart and Sustainable Power Systems: Operations, Planning and Economics of Insular Electricity Grids” (2015). He is a Senior Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks and Learning Systems, and a Senior Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics: Systems. He was an IEEE CIS Fellows Committee Member in 2022-2024. He was elected Full Member of Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Honor Society, in 2023. He was recognized as an Outstanding Associate Editor 2023 of the IEEE Transactions on Emerging Topics in Computational Intelligence, an Outstanding Associate Editor 2021 of the IEEE Transactions on Power Systems, and an Outstanding Senior Associate Editor 2020 of the IEEE Transactions on Smart Grid. Furthermore, he has won 5 Best Paper Awards at IEEE Conferences.