Digital Twin + AI: Control Room of the Future | May 9th, 2024

Описание: Presentation Abstract
The control room functions as the central brain of the grid, essential for balancing supply and demand and ensuring moment-to-moment grid reliability. Like the human brain, which processes sensory data to make decisions, control room operators analyze operational data from power generation, transmission, and distribution to make informed decisions. Currently, decision-making primarily rests with operators due to hardware and software limitations. However, with technological advancements, Digital Twins and AI are becoming high interest points in the control room's decision-making pilot programs. NREL is developing a comprehensive decision-making platform that integrates Digital Twins, AI, and advanced visualization techniques. As this integration progresses, the role of Digital Twins will evolve from conducting automated simulations to serving as a Trustworthy AI enabler, offering verification and validation of AI-generated response for power systems or providing physics-aware synthetic data of AI pre-training.

Short Bio of the Presenters
Mr. Seong Lok Choi is responsible for Bulk Electric System (BES) Energy Management System (EMS) support at the Power System Engineering Center at NREL. As part of his work with the Global Power System Transformation (G-PST) Consortium engagement, he assists control room operators in developing countries.
His expertise is focused on real-time grid operation simulator implementation, EMS/DTS software development, AI, Digital Twin, Cybersecurity, and the control room of the future. Prior to NREL, Mr. Choi was an EMS support and software architect with the Western Electricity Coordinating Council (WECC) and Peak Reliability Coordinator (PeakRC), and he was with Ameren as a software developer. Mr. Choi is currently working towards a doctoral degree at the University of Michigan and holds a graduate degree from Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri.

Dr. Rishabh Jain is currently a senior researcher in the Power Systems Engineering Center at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. He completed his education in Electrical Engineering - bachelors from Indian Institute of Technology Dhanbad in 2011, M.S. from University of Idaho in 2014, and Ph.D. from North Carolina State University in 2018. In his current role, Dr. Jain is leading multiple research projects focusing on sustainable protection, DER-control strategies, and operation of integrated energy systems with the power grid – to support the increasing penetration of inverter based distributed generation. His research interests are focused on networking challenges of microgrids, scalable test-bed development, dynamic adaptive protection, situational awareness in the control room, and sustainable grid integration of alternative energy systems.

Dr. Hongming Zhang is currently Supervisor of LCRA SCADA EMS Group in Austin, Texas. He received his Ph.D. from Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas, and got his BS and MS degrees in Electrical Engineering from Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China, respectively. Dr. Zhang had over 20-year experience in design & development and implementation of Energy Management System (EMS) advanced network applications for large control rooms since 2001. Prior to 2020, he held Senior/Lead EMS engineer and EMS group manager positions ABB Automation Inc, ERCOT, WECC Reliability Coordinator & Peak Reliability, respectively. During his work at Peak Reliability, Dr. Zhang served as Chair of WECC Joint Synchronized Information Subcommittee (JSIS), Taskforce Lead in NERC Synchronized Measurement Subcommittee (SMS), and a Steering Committee Member of the North American Synchrophasor Initiative (NASPI).

This presentation is part of the Bi-Monthly Calls: IEEE TF on Digital Twin of Large Scale Power Systems.