Daniel Kirschen

Applications in Engineering
Electrical Engineering

Electric energy is generated and delivered to homes and businesses through what is called the power system, a.k.a. “the grid.” This system is designed to be operated in an economically efficient manner while meeting very high standards of reliability. Its environmental impact should also be reduced through the integration of an increasing amount of renewable energy sources. Doing all this without building power plants and transmission lines everywhere requires making decisions based on a considerable amount of data from disparate and distributed sources. This is what I have been working on for the last 25 years.

Specific research questions that I am currently investigating include:

Can we design better data-sharing processes between the various entities responsible for controlling different parts of the grid?
How can we use the vast amounts of data generated by Phasor Measurement Units (PMUs) to improve the stability of the power system?
Can we extract useful information from “smart meters” and use it to make the demand for electricity more flexible and hence facilitate the integration of renewable energy sources?