Events Calendar

Smart Monitoring for Power Grid Reliability and Security

Speaker: Yue Zhao , Princeton University

Talk Title: Smart Monitoring for Power Grid Reliability and Security

Abstract: Great challenges for operating power systems reliably are posed by the increasing energy demand, renewable penetration, and extreme weather due to climate change. As information technology and networks play major roles in transforming how power grid is operated, security issues from cyber-physical intrusion also become critical. In this talk, we focus on the role of monitoring systems in ensuring reliability and security of power grids. Firstly, we discuss outage detection in large-scale power distribution networks. A system that combines optimally deployed real-time power flow sensors and non-real-time load forecasts is proposed. Next, we study the joint problem of outage detection and state estimation. We provide a simple closed form expression for the joint posterior, which enables fast computation for optimal joint detectors and estimators. Finally, we discuss the fundamental limits of monitoring systems in detecting cyber-physical attacks. An open problem of finding sparsest unobservable attacks is solved.

Biography: Yue Zhao is a postdoctoral scholar with the Department of Electrical Engineering at Princeton University and that at Stanford University. He obtained his PhD from the Department of Electrical Engineering at University of California, Los Angeles. His research is in enhancing situational awareness and cyber-physical security of power systems, as well as designing incentives for energy saving behavior.

Host: Urbashi Mitra, x04667, ubli@usc.edu

Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 539

Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

Contact: Gerrielyn Ramos