RIMI: Enhancing Minority Power Research in the Development of Advanced Tools for the Emerging Needs of Power Systems

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Momoh Howard University HRD 9628655 Howard University has been involved in power systems research for over a decade and is now among the top five schools in the United States for power research, attracting minority students (both undergraduate and graduate), faculty and postdoctoral research associates from across the country as well as from abroad. Recent outreach programs involving high school and pre-college minority students have created a strong awareness and interest in electrical engineering concepts. The Enhancement of Minority Power Research in the Development of Advanced Tools for Emerging needs of Power Systems is designed to meet the challenges of today's power industry with the objective of delivering an economic reliable power supply and enhancing research education for minority students an faculty. The following tasks outlined in this proposal build upon our current strengths: (a) Develop a program to build research of current interest to the US economy. (b) Develop a program to attract, retain and expose minority students (high school, college, graduate and postdoctoral fellows and faculty and visiting professors. (c) Develop and maintain a first-class research center with modem state-of-the-art equipment. (d) Conduct an outreach program via seminars and other activities for high school and pre-college students. The research component of the proposal focuses on investigating two of the top national needs in power systems as identified by the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), Department of Energy (DOE) and the National Science Foundation (NSF). The two topics are in the area of generation and transmission planning and distribution automation. In the generation and transmission planning area, two major priorities are identified- incorporating unit commitment and transmission constraints in the medium term operations planning models or the production costing mod els, and combining unit commitment, optimal power flow and power brokerage functions in an integrated environment for analysis of power scheduling and trading. A multi-objective optimization-based dynamic security-constrained rescheduling model is proposed as a means to guard against potential instability against dynamic contingencies. In the area of distribution automation two key problems, automatic fault location and network reconfiguration. have been selected. The core research involves designing and implementing fault location algorithms using a hybrid expert system/fuzzy logic approach. The network reconfiguration modeling involves use of the interior- point-based mixed-integer-programming optimization algorithms coupled with artificial neural network and a rule-based system for performing switching operations, VAR control and load curtailment. The Electrifcal Engineering department s educational curriculum ensures proper dissemination of our finds through seminars, visiting scientists program and short courses. This proposal will help increase the representation of minority engineers in the field of power engineering by increasing the number of minority students entering graduate and undergraduate programs. It will help develop the infrastructure, thereby providing graduate and undergraduate students state-of-the-art equipment for conducting research. It will assist minority research faculty and staff in conducting and assisting minority students in high level research. Finally, it will provide solutions to top priority research needs of the power industry.