Collaborative Research: AMPS: Rethinking State Estimation for Power Distribution Systems in the Quantum Era

向可再生能源的加速过渡以及智能物联网（IoT）设备的电力系统的快速现代化提出了新的集成挑战，并使系统极易受到新的网络威胁。这些挑战和风险突出表明，迫切需要更先进、更强大的状态和情况意识，这对于及早发现和缓解电网事故至关重要。该项目旨在为量子时代电力系统状态估计（SE）建立一套新颖的量子架构、算法和数学工具，这是监控和数据采集（SCADA）系统中的一个关键过程。通过利用量子计算和量子网络的最新突破和实际应用，该项目研究了量子计算的巨大能力如何对系统中的变化提供更快速和准确的响应。此外，该项目利用量子网络提供高度机密性和完整性的数据通信，将电网安全性提升到一个新的水平。该项目将通过开源软件的发布以及下一代工程师的教育和培训，特别是那些来自STEM中代表性不足群体的工程师，产生广泛的社区和社会影响。该项目的目标是开发一个整体的量子启发框架，用于电力状态估计，解决分散电网的网络风险和运营挑战。为此，开展了四项主要研究工作：1)量子网络体系结构——设计面向服务的网络体系结构和协议，实现智能电网中的量子密钥分发和保密通信处理；2)面向SE的量子计算——开发及时高效的功率状态估计解决方案，包括高效预处理、优化哈密顿量、硬件嵌入和退火；3)面向SE的分布式量子系统——在量子网络、量子计算和先进深度学习方法的支持下，提出了一种鲁棒和可信的分布式系统状态估计。4)评估——基于量子网络物理测试平台对拟议框架进行部署、测试和全面性能评估，以支持由量子网络和计算技术实现的智能电网的状态估计。该项目将为量子技术在智能电网中的应用奠定数学和算法基础。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The accelerated transition to renewable energy and the rapid modernization of power systems with smart Internet-of-Thing (IoT) devices have presented new integration challenges and made the systems highly vulnerable to new cyberthreats. These challenges and risks underscore the urgent need for more advanced and robust state and situation awareness that are essential to the early detection and mitigation of grid incidents. This project aims to establish a novel collection of quantum architectures, algorithms, and mathematical tools for quantum era power system state estimation (SE), a critical process in supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems. By capitalizing on the recent breakthroughs and real-world applications in quantum computing and quantum networking, the project investigates how the massive power of quantum computing can provide more rapid and accurate responses to changes in the systems. Further, the project leverages quantum networking to provide data communication with high confidentiality and integrity, raising the power grid security to the next level. This project will have broad community and societal impacts through open-source software release and the education and training of the next generation of engineers, particularly those from underrepresented groups in STEM.The goal of this project is to develop a holistic quantum-inspired framework for power state estimation, addressing the cyber risks and operational challenges for decentralized grids. Towards this goal, four main research activities include 1) Quantum network architecture - designing a network and service-oriented architecture and protocols to implement the quantum key distribution and to handle the confidential communications in smart grids; 2) Quantum computing for SE - developing timely and high-efficient solutions for power state estimation, including efficient preprocessing, optimizing Ising Hamiltonian, hardware-embedding, and annealing; and 3) Distributed quantum systems for SE - proposing a robust and trust-worthy distributed system state estimation with a support of quantum networking, quantum computing, and advanced deep learning methods. 4) Assessment - deploying, testing, and conducting comprehensive performance assessment of the proposed framework based on a quantum cyber-physical testbed to support the state estimation in smart grids enabled by quantum networking and computing technologies. This project will lay the mathematical and algorithmic foundation for the application of quantum technologies in smart grids.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.