The ALSETLab
at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute has received an award of $100,000 from
Dominion Energy, a Virginia-based company, to support research on flexible
alternating current transmission systems.

ALSET stands
for Analysis Laboratory for Synchrophasor and Electrical Energy Technology, but
perhaps more importantly, it is “Tesla” – as in, Nikola Tesla – spelled
backwards. The lab specializes in modeling and simulation of cyber-physical
systems.

For this
project, the ALSETLab, led by Luigi Vanfretti, an associate professor of
electrical, computer and systems engineering at Rensselaer, will use tools that
have not been in widespread use in power electronics to develop models and run
simulations to better understand how to overhaul the aging power grid and
integrate it with more renewable energy sources.

“The
innovations from this Dominion Energy project have been a really good fit with
ALSETLab’s efforts in power grid analysis, and the results are promising,”
Vanfretti said of his team’s progress in building viable models. “The outcome
is to have a portable model that will run multiple simulations and compare them
to actual grid performance, providing predictive analytics in a software rich
environment.”

Prototyping, software mapping and
model testing will continue over the next calendar year as the research teams
moves closer to finalizing a standardized model that will work in both the
simulated and live environments.

John Wen, the head of the
Rensselaer Department of Electrical, Computing, and Systems Engineering, said
this collaboration between ALSETLab and Dominion Energy fits into the
department’s lengthy history of industry engagement and responsiveness.

“Such interactions are crucial to
the relevance and impact of our research and education programs,” Wen said.