Abstract
The morning lectures by Prof Low cover power grid operations today, with discussion devoted to several "information signals,” measured in units of volts, vars, frequency, megawatts, and megawatt-hours. Regarding the user of electricity (such as a typical member of the audience), what units are most important in terms of quality of life? Once we grasp the answer, we can consider how to make a more resilient grid, even with the introduction of significant volatile energy from renewable sources such as solar and wind generation.
The talk will proceed with a short survey of the remarkable robust distributed control architecture that is commonplace today, and new distributed control architectures of the future. A few words will be devoted to the "fallacy of price signals," leading to the final lecture by Prof Poolla.