From traditional power systems to smart grids: A control perspective
Nell'ambito della procedura di valutazione di un Ricercatore a Tempo Determinato tipologia B
ai fini della chiamata nel ruolo di Professore di II fascia ai sensi dell’art. 24, comma 5, legge 240/2010, SSD ING-INF/04 – SC 09/G1
Alessandro Di Giorgio terrà un seminario pubblico venerdì 20 Settembre 2019, ore 15.00, aula A7 (DIAG, Via Ariosto 25)
TITLE: From traditional power systems to smart grids: A control perspective
ABSTRACT:
In this talk, I will present an overview of my research activity in the field of systems and control methodologies applied to traditional power systems and new generation smart electricity grids. Over the last two decades, power systems have been facing new challenges such as the system unbundling and consequent establishment of electricity markets, the integration and coordination of distributed energy resources, electric vehicles and active demand, the protection of the infrastructure against cyber-attacks; this new scenario implies to redesign the way current power systems are planned and operated from a control perspective. Among my recent research activities, I will present some results about power system protection and load control for demand side management applications.
At first I will discuss the protection of power plants against destabilizing signals injected in the network by an exogeneous attacker, which poses a problem of disturbance decoupling in the context of differential-algebraic systems; the standard decoupling methods are made robust, in spite of poor information about plant parameters and lack of state measurement, with the aid of an extended observer. In this way it is possible to keep the protected dynamics arbitrarily close to the one of a suitably chosen stable system, so long as the dynamics being targeted by the attack remain within prescribed bounds.
Motivated by the differential-algebraic nature of power systems and the analysis of the previous problem, I will also present some theoretical results concerning the robust stabilization of a class of differential-algebraic systems; the proposed control combines a partial output feedback control, aimed at letting the system behave as a regular system, and a robust control, again based on the previously introduced extended observer.
Finally I will present the problem of plug-in electric vehicles charging control, as example of the load management problems arising in the context of demand side management applications. In its basic form this problem can be modeled as a real time scheduling problem subject to dynamical constraints; the proposed control leverages the general concepts of Model Predictive Control and is shown to be effective discussing some field test results achieved in the context of a european research project and technology transfer activities.
The talk will end presenting my teaching activities, discussing their connection with the research activities, and summarizing future research directions.
SHORT BIO:
Alessandro Di Giorgio received the Degree in Physics in 2005 and the Ph.D. in Systems Engineering in 2010. Since 2007 he has collaborated with the Consortium for the Research in Automation and Telecommunications. Since 2009 he has been a Post-Doc and an Assistant Professor (RTD-A) at DIAG - Sapienza University of Rome, and a Lecturer at Università Telematica eCampus. He currently holds a tenure-track position as an Assistant Professor (RTD-B) at DIAG - Sapienza University of Rome. On April 2018 he received the National Scientific Qualification as Associate Professor (SSD: ING-INF/04 Automatica). Over the last ten years he has taught Modeling and Simulation, Automation Technologies, Network Control and Handling, Automatic Control.
His research activities deals with the application of systems and control theory methodologies to the analysis and control of networks, focusing on next generation electricity grids (Smart Grids); topics of interest include, but are not limited to, local energy management systems for demand side management, integration of wind turbines, energy storage systems and electromobility in the operation of microgrids and distribution grids, and power system protection against adverse events and malicious attacks. He is the author of more than 20 journal papers, 40 conference papers and book chapters on these topics.
Since 2007, he has participated in 10 research projects funded by the European Union (EU), 1 project funded in the context of the italian programme Industria 2015 and 4 academic projects, also taking the role of Principal Investigator. The results of his research activities in the field of electromobility are the subject of technology transfer activities, undertaken by the Sapienza’s start-up Applied Research to Technologies, whose Alessandro Di Giorgio is proponent and scientific reference.