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Effective integration of large amounts of renewable energy into the grid is of utmost importance for sustainable future and greener smart cities. Due to the unpredictable variations in weather, over 80% of the available renewable energy from solar and wind sources cannot be harnessed effectively. Large scale and cost-effective integration of photovoltaic energy into the smart grid is challenging due to: (a) unpredictability and intermittency of weather pattern, (b) fast morning ramp up and afternoon ramp down of solar generation that triggers instabilities in the grid, (c) unavailability of solar generation at sun down requiring the need for locational energy storage facilities, and (d) lack of technologies for efficient and intelligent on-demand sharing of solar generation with conventional power generation in the grid. Current technologies of solar integration are based on unreliable weather prediction and ineffective load sharing that make the overall grid performance unreliable and inefficient, thus necessitating the need for a broader outlook of the whole picture.

This research brings a holistic vision of the future smart grid as a synergistic integration of its various components with novel computational tools for forecasting and intelligent load sharing with distributed energy storage. The study collects real-time Photovoltaic (PV) data from the plant, conducts high-end modeling, analysis and visualization on various datasets to understand, predict and mitigate the system instabilities and fluctuations triggered by PV intermittencies. This solution can be used in the planning process at the command and control centers for electric utilities.

The developed approach, which is an adaptive, resilient, efficient and effective integration of renewables, will be applicable broadly in the energy sector thereby reducing carbon footprint and making the system stable under expected high penetration of renewable sources and unanticipated intermittencies. This solution fills the gap that will help our nation steer closer to the ultimate goal of a sustainable future involving a smart clean power grid. This project will pursue several outreach activities to engage with students from underrepresented groups.

Arif Sarwat (M’08, SM16) received his masters from University of Florida in 2005 and Ph.D degree from the University of South Florida in 2010. Currently, he is an Associate Professor and Director of FPL-FIU Solar Research Facility in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the Florida International University (FIU), where he leads the Energy Power & Sustainability (EPS) group. His research interests include smart grids, PlugIn Hybrid and Electric Vehicle (PHEV & EV Systems), high penetration renewable systems, grid resiliency, large-scale data analysis, advance metering infrastructure, smart city infrastructure and cybersecurity. Dr. Sarwat is the recipient of the NSF CAREER award in 2016, and recipient of multiple federal and industry research awards. He was the author/co-author of conference best paper awards at the resilience week in 2017 and a journal best paper award in 2016 from Modern Power Systems and Clean Energy journal. Dr. Sarwat received, Faculty Award for Excellence in Research & Creative Activities in 2016, College of Engineering & Computing Worlds Ahead Performance in 2016 and FIU TOP Scholar Award in 2015. Dr. Sarwat worked at Siemens for more than nine years, winning three recognition awards. He is chair of IEEE Miami Section VT and Communication since 2012.

1. “Overview of technical specifications for grid-connected photovoltaic systems”,A. Anzalchi, A.I. Sarwat,”Energy Conversion and Management”, Vol. 152, 2017, pp. 312-327, ISSN 0196-8904, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.enconman.2017.09.049
2. “Optimal design of hybrid wind/photovoltaic electrolyzer for maximum hydrogen production using imperialist competitive algorithm”,A. Khalilnejad, A. Sundararajan, A.I. Sarwat, Journal of Modern Power Systems and Clean Energy (MPCE), pp. 1-10, June 2017
3. “Model Predictive Power Control Approach for Three-Phase Single-Stage Grid-Tied PV Module-Integrated Converter”,A. Moghadasi, A. Sargolzaei, A. Anzalchi, A. Sarwat, Accepted in IEEE Transactions on Industry Applications
4. “A New Topology of Higher Order Power Filter for Single-Phase Grid-tied Voltage Source Inverters“, A. Anzalchi, A. Moghadasi, M. Moghaddami and A.I. Sarwat, IEEE Transactions on Industrial Electronics, vol. 63, no. 12, pp. 7511-7522, Dec. 2016
5. “ Self-Tuning Variable Frequency Controller for Inductive Electric Vehicle Charging With Multiple Power Levels“, M. Moghaddami and A.I. Sarwat, IEEE Transactions on Transportation Electricification, Vol. 3, No. 2, pp. 488-495, December 2016

Conferences

1. “Roadmap to Prepare Distribution Grid-Tied Photovoltaic Site Data for Performance Monitoring”, A. Sundararajan and A.I. Sarwat, IEEE International Conference on Big Data, IoT \& Data Analytics (BID), Pune, India 2017
2. “A Distributed Intelligent Framework for Electricity Theft Detection Using Benford’s Law and Stackelberg Game“, L. Wei, A. Sundararajan, A.I. Sarwat, S. Biswas and E. Ibrahim, Resilience Week, Wilmington, DE, September 2017 ( Best Symposium Paper awarded to Dr Arif Sarwat at International Symposium on resilient Cyber Systems)
3. “A Survey on Low Latency Towards 5G: RAN, Core Network and Caching Solutions“, I. Parvez, A. Rahmati, I. Guvenc, A.I. Sarwat and H. Dai, IEEE Communication surveys & tutorial (under review)
4. “A Gossip Algorithm based Clock Synchronization Scheme for Smart Grid Applications“, I. Parvez, J. Pinto and A.I. Sarwat, IEEE NAPS 2017
5. “A review on cyber security issues and mitigation methods in smart grid systems“, M. Pour, A. Anzalchi and A. Sarwat, SoutheastCon 2017, Charlotte, NC, 2017, pp. 1-4
6. “A review on cyber security issues and mitigation methods in smart grid systems“, M.M. Pour, A. Anzalchi and A.I. Sarwat, IEEE NAPS 2017
7. “Review of Cyber-Physical Attacks and Counter Defense Mechanisms for Advanced Metering Infrastructure in Smart Grid”, L. Wei, L.P. Rondon, A. Moghadasi, A.I. Sarwat, IEEE PES T&D 2018, Denver, Colorado, USA, 2018
8. “Multi-armed bandit for LTE-U and WiFi coexistence in unlicensed bands“, M. G. S. Sriyananda, I. Parvez, I. Güvene, M. Bennis and A. I. Sarwat,  2016 IEEE Wireless Communications and Networking Conference, Doha, 2016, pp. 1-6
9. “A self-tuning variable frequency control for multi-level contactless Electric Vehicle charger“, M. Moghaddami, A. Sundararajan and A. I. Sarwat, 2016 IEEE International Conference on Power Electronics, Drives and Energy Systems (PEDES), Trivandrum, India, 2016, pp. 1-5

Book Chapters

1. “Trends and Future Directions of Research for Smart Grid IoT Sensor Networks”, A.I. Sarwat, A. Sundararajan and I. Parvez, International Symposium on Sensor Networks, Systems and Security (ISSNSS), Lakeland, FL, September 2017