AGI SP25 Power Seminar Series ~ Dispatching Active Distribution Networks by Using Distributed Energy Resources by Dr. Rahul Gupta

About the event

Advanced Grid Institute (AGI) proudly hosts Dr. Rahul Gupta, Energy Systems Innovation Center, who will present Dispatching Active Distribution Networks by Using Distributed Energy Resources

ABSTRACT
Modern power systems face significant operational challenges due to the accelerated and much-needed deployment of decentralized renewable generation. Such deployment has increased power imbalances leading to increased reserve requirements in power transmission grids and is causing operational issues in power distribution grids associated with the delivered quality-of-service (especially concerning voltage quality) as well as lines and transformers congestions. A potential solution to tackle these challenges is to define efficient and scalable control frameworks in active distribution networks (ADNs) capable of: (i) satisfying the local ADNs’ constraints and (ii) aggregating heterogeneous resources at different timescales to provide ancillary services to the transmission network. This work proposes a control and scheduling framework that tracks a pre-defined power profile (dispatch plan) at the grid connection point (GCP) of an ADN while ensuring that the grid states (i.e., the nodal voltages and lines/transformer power/current flows) remain within the prescribed limits. We demonstrate the effectiveness of the algorithm by field experiments on real distribution systems installed with controllable energy storage systems and photovoltaic plants as well as fast EV charging stations.

BIO
Dr. Rahul Gupta earned his M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL) in 2018 and 2023, respectively. His doctoral research earned him the EPFL PhD Thesis Distinction in Electrical Engineering in 2023. Following his Ph.D., he served as a postdoctoral researcher at the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, from Oct. 2023 to Dec. 2024, supported by a grant from the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF). Since January 2025, Dr. Gupta has been an Assistant Professor at the School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS), Washington State University (WSU). His research focuses on the operation and planning of active distribution networks addressing various kinds of uncertainties, measurement and model-less control schemes, power system parameter estimation and synthetic network generation.