Data-driven control of power networks

Global warming, an increase in carbon emissions, and the growing national economy and the resulting increasing power demand have provoked the government and energy utilities to take solid steps towards energy technology innovation. An important part of energy technology transformation and innovation is the power network. The future power network is envisioned as a large-scale cyber- physical system encompassing advanced power, communications, control, and computing technologies. To accommodate these technologies, it will have to build on solid mathematical tools that can ensure an efficient and robust operation of such heterogeneous and large-scale cyber- physical systems. It is becoming more and more difficult to control, predict and evaluate the behavior of power networks by using traditional methods, which typically rely on accurate mathematical models of the underlying physical system. This asks for developing data-based and model-free control schemes that can compensate for the lack of knowledge on the model.