Scalable monitoring and kernel learning for energy grids

Vassilis Kekatos
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
University of Minnesota

12:00pm-1:00pm, Thursday, 13 March 2014, ITE 325b, UMBC

The smart grid vision urges for enhanced situational awareness, sustainability, and economics over our energy systems. While meters are being installed throughout the grid, algorithms that can effectively process this big data deluge are now demanded. Aligned to that end, this talk focuses first on scalable grid monitoring. Albeit control centers monitor their local grids independently, deregulation and renewables call for power system state estimation (PSSE) at the interconnection level. To address the complexity and communication challenges involved, a decentralized PSSE framework based on the alternating direction method of multipliers has been developed. Beyond conventional least-squares, our framework can identify outliers and circuit breaker statuses as verified on IEEE grids having thousands of nodes. Electricity market inference is the second theme of this talk. We will first demonstrate how grid topologies can be revealed using only publicly available real-time energy prices. This becomes feasible after recognizing that the price matrix can be factorized as the product of the grid Laplacian times a low-rank and sparse matrix. Leveraging the link between energy markets and the underlying physical grids, we will then cast day-ahead price forecasting as a kernel learning task. Through a novel nuclear norm-based regularization, kernels across pricing nodes and hours are systematically selected. Numerical tests using real data from the Midwest ISO market corroborate the interpretative merits of our schemes.

Dr. Vassilis Kekatos is currently a postdoctoral associate with the ECE Dept. of the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. He obtained his Ph.D. in Computer Engineering and Science from the University of Patras, Greece, in 2007. In 2009, he received a Marie Curie fellowship. During the summer of 2012, he worked as a consultant for Windlogics Inc. His current interests lie in the areas of signal processing, optimization, and statistical learning towards modernizing our energy systems.

Host: Tulay Adali

Scalable monitoring and kernel learning for energy grids

Vassilis Kekatos
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
University of Minnesota

12:00pm-1:00pm, Thursday, 13 March 2014, ITE 325b, UMBC

The smart grid vision urges for enhanced situational awareness, sustainability, and economics over our energy systems. While meters are being installed throughout the grid, algorithms that can effectively process this big data deluge are now demanded. Aligned to that end, this talk focuses first on scalable grid monitoring. Albeit control centers monitor their local grids independently, deregulation and renewables call for power system state estimation (PSSE) at the interconnection level. To address the complexity and communication challenges involved, a decentralized PSSE framework based on the alternating direction method of multipliers has been developed. Beyond conventional least-squares, our framework can identify outliers and circuit breaker statuses as verified on IEEE grids having thousands of nodes. Electricity market inference is the second theme of this talk. We will first demonstrate how grid topologies can be revealed using only publicly available real-time energy prices. This becomes feasible after recognizing that the price matrix can be factorized as the product of the grid Laplacian times a low-rank and sparse matrix. Leveraging the link between energy markets and the underlying physical grids, we will then cast day-ahead price forecasting as a kernel learning task. Through a novel nuclear norm-based regularization, kernels across pricing nodes and hours are systematically selected. Numerical tests using real data from the Midwest ISO market corroborate the interpretative merits of our schemes.

Dr. Vassilis Kekatos is currently a postdoctoral associate with the ECE Dept. of the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. He obtained his Ph.D. in Computer Engineering and Science from the University of Patras, Greece, in 2007. In 2009, he received a Marie Curie fellowship. During the summer of 2012, he worked as a consultant for Windlogics Inc. His current interests lie in the areas of signal processing, optimization, and statistical learning towards modernizing our energy systems.

Host: Tulay Adali

CSEE professor Marie desJardins was interviewed for a story, Education Key Theme for International Women’s Day, by the Voice of America on International Women’s Day (March 8).

“If you look at the statistics, well over half of all STEM jobs in the next 10 to 15 years are in computing … yet when people talk about STEM, they tend to think about biology, physics,” said University of Maryland Baltimore County Professor Marie Desjardins who teaches computer science and engineering. “Those are great areas, but those are not where the big job growth is going to be.”

DesJardins also says exposing kids at an early age is key to getting them interested in STEM.

“Let your girls try things that are not typically girly,” she said. “Make sure your kids are getting that from an early age so they think of themselves as creators of technology and new ideas not just following the rules.”

DesJardins says she emphasizes that computer science is really about helping make the world a better place.

Here is the video that accompanied the VIA story.

CSEE professor Marie desJardins was interviewed for a story, Education Key Theme for International Women’s Day, by the Voice of America on International Women’s Day (March 8).

“If you look at the statistics, well over half of all STEM jobs in the next 10 to 15 years are in computing … yet when people talk about STEM, they tend to think about biology, physics,” said University of Maryland Baltimore County Professor Marie Desjardins who teaches computer science and engineering. “Those are great areas, but those are not where the big job growth is going to be.”

DesJardins also says exposing kids at an early age is key to getting them interested in STEM.

“Let your girls try things that are not typically girly,” she said. “Make sure your kids are getting that from an early age so they think of themselves as creators of technology and new ideas not just following the rules.”

DesJardins says she emphasizes that computer science is really about helping make the world a better place.

Here is the video that accompanied the VIA story.

UMBC’s intercollegiate cyber competition team (the “CyberDawgs”) are heading to the finals of the Mid-Atlantic Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition (CCDC) on March 26-29 at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab – Kossiakoff Center in Laurel, MD!

Nearly 300 students from schools throughout the Mid-Atlantic region competed in several qualification rounds to determine the eight finalist teams. Joining the CyberDawgs at the finals will be teams from Anne Arundel Community College, Liberty University, West Virginia University, Towson University, Radford University, Capitol College, and Millersville University. The winner of the Mid-Atlantic finals will advance to the National CCDC Finals in San Antonio, TX later this spring.

The 2014 MA-CCDC finals scenario challenges teams to defend their networks against a series of escalating cybersecurity attacks occuring during a simulated disaster management situation in Maryland.

The 2014 National CyberWatch Mid-Atlantic Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition (CCDC) presented by National CyberWatch Center is in its ninth year of providing a unique experience for college and university students to test their cybersecurity knowledge and skills in a competitive environment.

UMBC’s intercollegiate cyber competition team (the “CyberDawgs”) are heading to the finals of the Mid-Atlantic Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition (CCDC) on March 26-29 at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab – Kossiakoff Center in Laurel, MD!

Nearly 300 students from schools throughout the Mid-Atlantic region competed in several qualification rounds to determine the eight finalist teams. Joining the CyberDawgs at the finals will be teams from Anne Arundel Community College, Liberty University, West Virginia University, Towson University, Radford University, Capitol College, and Millersville University. The winner of the Mid-Atlantic finals will advance to the National CCDC Finals in San Antonio, TX later this spring.

The 2014 MA-CCDC finals scenario challenges teams to defend their networks against a series of escalating cybersecurity attacks occuring during a simulated disaster management situation in Maryland.

The 2014 National CyberWatch Mid-Atlantic Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition (CCDC) presented by National CyberWatch Center is in its ninth year of providing a unique experience for college and university students to test their cybersecurity knowledge and skills in a competitive environment.

Do you like competing? Do you love being green? Do you love recycling? If you answered yes to any of these questions, you’ll love RecycleMania!

What is RecycleMania?

It is an annual 8-week competition between universities to see who can recycle the most! Sounds fun right? So go around and grab all your recyclables (and your friends) and help our school win!

RecycleMania is not just a competition; it’s also a great way to educate people about recycling. There are plenty of events to attend like the RecycleMania Parade and “Regames” which feature giveaways and musical performances!

For more information on events and scheduling, visit http://my.umbc.edu/groups/sustainability/news/39998 . If you still are not interested, maybe checking out their website will help? Just give it a try and recycle when you can!