Pr. Saifur Rahman

Pr. Saifur Rahman

Abstract: With the focus on environmental sustainability and energy security, power system planners are looking at renewable energy as agents of decarbonization to help with climate sustainability. But such generation sources have their own challenges – primarily intermittency. It is expected that the smart grid – due to its inherent communication, sensing and control capabilities – will have the ability to manage the load, storage and generation assets (including renewables) in the power grid to enable a large-scale integration of distributed generation. In a smart grid, information about the state of the grid and its components can be exchanged quickly over long distances and complex networks. It will therefore be possible to have the integration of sustainable energy sources, such as wind, solar, off-shore electricity, etc. for smoother system operation. But, in order to build smart grids engineers will need to start with intelligent microgrids as building blocks. This lecture introduces the operational characteristics of renewable energy sources, storage devices, and various aspects of the smart grid. It also addresses the interplay among distributed generation, storage and conventional generation to provide an efficient operational strategy in the context of the smart grid.
Biograhy: Professor Saifur Rahman is the founding director of the Advanced Research Institute at Virginia Tech, USA where he is the Joseph R. Loring professor of electrical and computer engineering. He also directs the Center for Energy and the Global Environment. He is a Life Fellow of the IEEE and an IEEE Millennium Medal winner. He is the 2023 IEEE President and CEO and was the president of the IEEE Power and Energy Society (PES) for 2018 and 2019. He is the founding editor-in-chief of the IEEE Electrification Magazine and the IEEE Transactions on Sustainable Energy. He has published over 150 journal papers and has made over five hundred conference and invited presentations. He is the founder of BEM Controls, LLC, a Virginia (USA)-based software company providing building energy management solutions. He has conducted several energy efficiency, renewable energy, blockchain and sensor integration projects for Duke Energy, Tokyo Electric Power Company, the US National Science Foundation, the US Department of Defense, the US Department of Energy and the State of Virginia. He has a PhD in electrical engineering from Virginia Tech.