Accurate information of power network parameters is essential for performing various power system monitoring and control tasks including state estimation, economic dispatch, and contingency analysis. In this paper, we present a novel approach of power network parameter correction wherein we exploit the sparse nature of parameter errors. Parameter error correction...
As the sources of our electricity shift from centralized and carbon emitting, to a portfolio of distributed, clean-energy sources, the wave energy converter (WEC) has become a topic of exploration and development for providing coastal communities electric power. Part of this trend has included an effort to create open source...
Methods that are applied to smooth distribution functions are useful in many applications. Areas of application include economics, financial markets and survival analysis. The empirical cumulative distribution function (ecdf) is unbiased and its asymptotic distribution is normal. However, the jump discontinuities of $\frac{1}{n}$ are undesirable in estimation because it makes...
The electrical output of solar panels is reduced when dust covers the panels, but the air movement produced by a flying drone can be used to remove this debris. This research project will study the effectiveness of a quadcopter drone in dusting a solar panel. A solar panel was covered...
As the power system grows larger and more complex, real-time monitoring and control become very significant in order to achieve reliable operation of the power system. Before any security assessment can be made or control actions are taken, the reliable estimate of the existing state of the system must be...
The Pacific Northwest is part of the "Ring of Fire," which is well-known for heavy seismic activity. Numerous active faults in the area have encouraged electric grid managers in the region to more deeply contemplate and proactively intervene to support grid resilience. This research introduces Monte Carlo (MC) based power...
We consider multiple Compressive Sensing (CS) problems wherein the supports of signal vectors of CS problems are restricted to satisfy a collection of joint logical constraints, which we refer to as coupling constraints. We consider a case where the coupling constraints are encoded in a graph and present a sequential...
Ocean waves provide a promising source of renewable energy for the North American electric grid. However, ideal control of wave energy converters (WECs) requires perfect forecasting of future wave conditions, and waves can be unpredictable. This paper presents a comparison of three different prediction methods and analyzes their performance in...
In this thesis, we introduce alignment-based algorithms for improving the performance of reinforcement learning solutions for problems where the reward signal cannot be collapsed into a single number. Many real world problems require an agent to balance performance, longevity, and safety, and do so across different timelines. The key to...
Ocean users and marine scientists both have connections to the sea. This research explores how the nature of their connection to the sea leads to different perceptions of risk and comfort with uncertainty, and how these differences might be important to consider when one group has information another group needs....
This design of a Grid Friendly Electric Hot Water Heater Thermostat was built for the Electrical and Computer Engineering Senior Design course, ECE44x. The design enables hot water heaters to respond to imbalances in the grid seen through deviations from standard grid frequency by varying the power output to the...
Energy security is a vital but often unmet requirement for community resiliency. Electricity availability is essential to the functioning of the economy, individual households, and the collective essential services that provide health, safety, and the basic human needs to sustain life. Coastal communities in Oregon face special vulnerability because they...
Despite its promise as a potentially beneficial new source of energy, the ocean-based renewable energy industry is still in its infancy, and like any new idea there are many unknowns with the potential to affect both people and our natural environments. A permit for marine renewable energy (MRE) must cut...
Model Predictive Control (MPC) has previously been investigated on ocean waveenergy converters (WEC) to improve the amount of power captured, while respectingthe system constraints. Previous research done in the same area, focused onbuilding a control scheme by using the knowledge of the past & current statesof the system and predicting...
We generalize overpartition rank and crank generating functions to obtain k-fold variants, and give a combinatorial interpretation for each. The k-fold crank generating function is interpreted by extending the first and second residual cranks to a natural infinite family. The k-fold rank generating functions generate two families of buffered Frobenius...
When the term renewable energy is mentioned in a conversation, wind, solar, and hydro energy typically come to mind. However, there is one major resource that has remained mostly untapped: wave energy. Wind and solar power technologies are well established around the world but they cannot generate electricity all the...
In this thesis I will look at a definition of computable randomness from Algorithmic Information Theory as defined by Andre Nies through the lens of Computable Analaysis asdefined by Klaus Weihrauch. I will show that despite the fact that these two paradigmsgenerate distinct classes of computable supermartingales, the class of...
Wave energy converters (WECs) are a broad class of emerging technology that converts hydrokinetic energy into some other useful form, such as electricity. The last stage in this transformation, the power take-off (PTO) subsystem, is often not experimentally evaluated until half-way through the recommended development process. This delay in evaluation...
Energy consumption has become a great deal for cloud service providers due to financial as well as environmental concerns. Studies show that cloud servers operate, most of the time, at only between 10% and 50% of their maximal utilizations. These same studies also show that servers that are kept ON...
Geomagnetically Induced Currents (GICs) are quasi-DC signals that are induced in the ground during geomagnetic disturbances (GMDs) and pose a large threat to power grid infrastructure. The power industry currently attempts to mitigate GIC effects by utilizing 1-D ground electrical conductivity based electric field predictions, though conductivity can vary in...
Hyperthermia is a cancer therapy that relies on the local heating of a cancerous tumor to kill cancer cells and disrupt the future growth of the tumor. While hyperthermia is capable of killing tumors separately, physicians often combine it with other treatment methods, typically radiation therapy, for its synergistic effects...
Recently, there has been peaked interest in developing high energy producing and optimized power take-off topologies for Wave Energy Converters (WEC). As large as the potential of the oceans may seem, harnessing that energy and effectively converting it to electricity in significant amounts is a challenge. Currently, there are no...
Vacuum arc remelting (VAR) is a secondary melting process for exotic alloys. The main purpose of this process is to increase the input ingot’s physical and chemical homogeneity. This is accomplished through the application of a high current that melts the material through the emergence of electrical arcs that induce...
Electric grid is a critical cyber-physical infrastructure that serves as lifeline for modern society. With the increasing trend of cyber-attacks, electric grid security has become a significant concern. Electric grid operators are working hard to reduce the risk of these attacks towards the system. Having security metrics for monitoring the...
The National Conference of State Legislatures NCSL declares that 29 states have
been active in adopting and increasing renewable portfolio standards. Present
renewable portfolio standards require utilities to increase integration of renewable
energy sources such as photovoltaic (PV). The increased penetration of PV systems
is expected to destabilize the power...
Modern variable speed machine drive (VSMD) systems are used for a variety of purposes including generation, propulsion, pumps and compressors. They employ high switching frequency power electronics to drive the electric machine. The machine is subject to large voltage overshoot if long power cables, are used, called Reflected Wave Phenomena...
Recent opportunities for new hydropower generation in the United States have often been in non-powered dams and run-of-river type flows occurring in low-impact natural areas and unregulated conduits. At the same time, a changing water resource paradigm is challenging some existing generation in drought stricken areas where supply reservoirs behind...
Optical wireless communication (OWC) is an alternative to radio frequency (RF)communication with a signi cantly larger and unregulated spectrum. In OWC systems, optical orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (O-OFDM) with intensity modulation and direct detection (IM/DD) is commonly used. There are two common signal structures in most OWC systems based on...
A power inverter, or inverter, is an electronic device or circuitry that converts direct currents (DC) to alternating currents (AC) in the power electronics family. A three-phase inverter converts DC current to three-phase AC current. Inverters, especially three-phase inverters, have been widely used in many fields including renewable energy applications...
Due to the popularity of electronically controlled loads and the widespread use of alternative energy sources such as wind turbines and solar cells, the power quality at the distribution level must be carefully monitored. One of the many different means to monitor power quality is through frequency measurements. Nonlinearities cause...
Seismically-induced liquefaction represents a major cause of damage to civil infrastructure and can result in significant damage following major earthquakes. Liquefaction can occur when earthquake ground motions raise pore-water pressures in loose, sandy soil, resulting in a substantial decrease of soil strength. Owing to the potential for instability following liquefaction,...
Synchrophasor technology has gained great momentum with the widely adopted concept of smart grids in power systems at transmission and generation level. This has led to an improved state estimation of a power system with the advent of Phasor Measurement Units (PMU). PMUs contribute in providing real-time information about the...
Increased penetration of renewable energy sources results in higher operating reserve requirements, due to the inherent variability and uncertainty of these resources. Many studies, primarily focusing on wind and solar, have determined that geographic diversity of variable renewables substantially reduces system variability and uncertainty. The Pacific Northwest is well suited...
Infrastructure systems are a critical component supporting today's modern society. From
power grids to traffic networks, we rely on these systems to perform as intended, despite
the various sources of uncertainty present in their operation. Designing for system
robustness can help mitigate the impact of failures caused by unexpected events....
This thesis is the combination of two research publications working toward a unified strategy in which to represent complex engineered systems as complex networks. Current engineered system modeling techniques segment large complex models into multiple groups to be simulated independently. These methods restrict the evaluations of such complex systems as...
Renewable energy, particularly wind power, has increased dramatically over the past two decades. In the Pacific Northwest, the power system has accommodated a large amount of new wind power. The variability of wind power has introduced many challenges, requiring additional reserve generation to be available to maintain system stability. The...
Routing from a single source node to multiple destination nodes using node disjoint paths (NDP) has many important applications in parallel systems. For example, if a source node wants to send distinct messages to distinct destination nodes, then the one-to-many NDP routing is useful.
Unlike parallel systems with shared-memory, each...
In wireless sensor networks (WSNs) nodes are battery powered. Therefore, the available
energy resources of sensor nodes should be managed efficiently in order to increase
the network lifetime. As a result, researchers have proposed routing schemes in order to
maximize network lifetime. Even though these schemes increase the network lifetime,...