Teaching
ECEN 5407: Renewable Energy and the Future Power Grid
As the amount of wind and solar power capacity has rapidly increased in the past few years, variable renewable energy has started to play an increasing role in power system operations and planning. This graduate course begins with an introduction to the power grid including planning and operations at the transmission and distribution levels. The course focus reflects that while many of the solutions to the integration of variable generation are technical in nature, policy and economics play a large role in the changes that are occurring within the power system. After examining the technological specifications of the most important variable generation sources (wind power, solar photovoltaics, and solar thermal power), as well as traditional power generation sources, other aspects of power system planning and operations in the future power grid are examined in detail. From the bulk power system level, the unit commitment and economic dispatch process is thoroughly covered, with exercises that emphasize how it can change based on new variable generation. The idea of flexibility in bulk power system operations is stressed as a key concept in renewable integration, and various sources of flexibility will be introduced: including electrical storage, balancing area cooperation, variable generation forecasting, stochastic unit commitment, and demand response. Distribution planning with high penetrations is also featured, including: PV hosting capacity studies, interconnection requirements, changing system operations in high renewable energy futures, and microgrids for reliability and resiliency. All of these concepts are explored in great detail and reinforced through the completion of a semester long project, where students solve emerging power system problems in interdisciplinary groups.
ECEN 5427: Power System Planning & Operations
This graduate course focuses on bulk power system planning and operations, with special emphasis on systems with high variable renewable energy penetrations. Electricity markets will also be presented, and the differences with vertically integrated utilities will be discussed. Students will develop an understanding of electricity market dynamics in one of the course projects by participating in an electricity market game. The application of optimization problems in bulk power system operations will be discussed and applied by the students in another course project. They will develop a production cost model to simulate bulk power system operations of a test system under different scenarios