Exploiting sparse structures and synergy designs to advance situational awareness of electrical power grid

Abstract

The growing threats of uncertainties, anomalies, and cyberattacks on power grids are driving a critical need to advance situational awareness which allows system operators to form a complete and accurate picture of the present and future state. Simulation and estimation are foundational tools in this process. However, existing tools lack the robustness and efficiency required to achieve the level of situational awareness needed for the ever-evolving threat landscape. Industry-standard (steady-state) simulators are not robust to blackouts, often leading to non-converging or non-actionable results. Estimation tools lack robustness to anomalous data, returning erroneous system states. Efficiency is the other major concern as nonlinearities and scalability issues make large systems slow to converge. This thesis addresses robustness and efficiency gaps through a dual-fold contribution. We first address the inherent limitations in the existing physics-based and data-driven worlds; and then transcend the boundaries of conventional algorithmic design in the direction of a new paradigm -- Physics-ML Synergy -- which integrates the strengths of the two worlds. Our approaches are built on circuit formulation which provides a unified framework that applies to both transmission and distribution. Sparse optimization acts as the key enabler to make these tools intrinsically robust and immune to random threats, pinpointing dominant sources of (random) blackouts and data errors. Further, we explore sparsity-exploiting optimizations to develop lightweight ML models whose prediction and detection capabilities are a complement to physics-based tools; and whose lightweight designs advance generalization and scalability. Finally, Physics-ML Synergy brings robustness and efficiency further against targeted cyberthreats, by interconnecting our physics-based tools with lightweight ML.