It’s clear the nation’s power infrastructure needs an upgrade. At the same time, the ways we light and power our homes and businesses are also rap­idly changing. Powered by the urgency of climate change, emerging renewable wind, solar, hydroelectric and other sustainable power sources are rapidly coming online.

And Stevens researchers are already working on reimag­ining the future of the nation’s power delivery systems.

“We’re interested in reimagining what the energy grid will look like,” says graduate student Danielle Preziuso. “This,” says systems professor and data-driven design expert Philip Odonkor, who advises Preziuso and also conducts his own power-grid research, “is the future.”

Plugging Into the Neighborhood

In the U.S., electricity is typically cre­ated at a few points, by large facilities, at bulk scale. Step-down transmission systems and substations then move that energy to cities, towns and homes for distribution and consumption.

But the aging, complex networks that make it happen can develop problems.

“As you go from generation to delivery, there are congestion points both at the transmission and distribution level,” notes Odonkor. “These points of failure can cause problems when there is a disruption, such as an extreme weather event that causes a shock in supply or demand.”

Newly available renewable energy sourc­es also require accommodating.

“Some of the most promising renew­able energy resources won’t necessarily be located close to where most of the people are,” Odonkor says. “Storage capabilities will need to be built; infrastructure will need to be retrofitted or built from scratch.”

One way to accommodate new energy sources and build reliability, he says, is through smaller “microgrids” deployed in local communities and regions that ef­ficiently manage the changes in local and regional energy demand that can cause blackouts and brownouts.

With a collaborating entrepreneur, Odonkor recently created a new AI-powered system known as Grid Discovery that inputs local data on population, cli­mate, building stock, energy demand and other variables, narrowing down the ideal locations for situating local energy nodes and microgrids for community planners.

“Intelligently locating significant numbers of regional, community or neighborhood sus­tainable energy resources — that's the goal," says Odonkor. "And Stevens can be part of it."

Diving Into ‘Energy Equity’

Preziuso’s own interest in renewable energy led her first to Iceland — a nation that runs almost entirely on renewables — for a master’s degree from Reykjavik University’s Iceland School of Energy. Later she took a position at the prestigious Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Washington state before deciding to pursue a Ph.D. at Stevens.

“I was looking for programs that were interdisciplinary in nature, specifically those that looked at the interface of society, policy and technology,” she says.

As the U.S. moves toward a cleaner, more decentralized grid, Preziuso says, individual buildings will be key to that transition.

“Buildings can become valuable assets to the electric grid when they optimize consumption to not just meet the needs of their occupants, but also to improve grid conditions — for example, shifting con­sumption outside periods of peak demand,” she explains, noting that new technologies and building types are emerging to meet that need.

Even so, certain buildings, neighbor­hoods and communities are historically and technically more advantaged to leverage new power systems than others. Preziuso will study this societal aspect of the tech­nology, as well.

“Understanding what sort of policy levers we can pull to more equitably distrib­ute the benefits of a low-carbon electric grid is critical,” she emphasizes. “A low-carbon electric grid is not guaranteed to be equitable. So, we need to make sure we’re asking this question.”

Demand Management, Storage Also Key

As it evolves, the nation’s energy distribution will also require more care­ful demand management during peak and off-peak periods, as well as the transitions between those periods.

“Consistency is the key,” explains Ste­vens professor Lei Wu, a national expert on power grid system management. “You can’t demand too much at the wrong time, and you also need to have your storage facility shedding, or sharing, energy during slow-demand times.”

Improved storage is a second unseen, but critical, element of sustainable power system planning.

“Energy storage is one of the key technologies that can mitigate the variabili­ties and uncertainties involved in renew­ables such as wind and solar, as well as in demand response,” notes Wu.

To address these challenges, he develops algorithmic methods to optimize energy generated, stored, delivered and shed by lo­cal power stations. Wu, who works with researchers and industry partners in Oregon, Arizona, Missouri and Indiana, is developing new mathematical models to augment the operational efficiency and flexibility of hydropower technology.

The Department of Energy has awarded $2.5 million to support the two projects, and the New Jersey utility Public Service Electric and Gas provides additional support as well.

Stevens researcher Junjian Qi also studies power grids, earning an NSF CAREER award in 2021 to study cascading failure and power system resilience, as well as additional NSF funding for a separate effort to develop systems that can coordi­nate photovoltaic, local energy storage and intelligent microinverters.

“We can’t rebuild the grid,” concludes Wu. “But we can redesign and optimize the tools that control and operate it to develop a greener, more efficient system that can withstand and rebound from weather extremes.”

— Paul Karr