Past Events

The Energy & Power Research Days are organized to showcase research projects and to facilitate discussions with industry. These events are co-sponsored by the Smart Grid Center (SGC) of Texas Engineering Experiment Station (TEES) and the Energy and Power Group (EPG) of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering.

This presentation covers an approach for modeling the impact of weather and other external inputs (EXIs) in the power flow, contingency analysis, and optimal power flow (OPF), with consideration of both deterministic and stochastic models. The need for this work is due to growing dependence of large-scale grids on the weather, the need to model the impact of many other EXIs, and the rapid increase of electric loads in many locations due to data centers and further electrification of various industries.

This course introduces the fundamentals of data science and artificial intelligence with a focus on power engineering applications. Participants will explore the theory and practice of machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI) including deep learning, neural networks, reinforcement learning (RL), large language models (LLMs), and mixture of experts, alongside traditional physics-based approaches.

This course presents how issues associated with the dynamics and stability affect the design and operation of large-scale electric grids. The analysis of electric grids is often divided into issues that affect their steady-state operations and issues that affect their dynamics and ultimate stability. With the recent changes in electricity systems, such as the integration of large amounts of renewable generation and the deployment of large numbers of phasor measurement units, dynamics are more important than ever.

This course provides a comprehensive introduction for those without an in-depth electric power engineering background on how such electric grids are designed and operated, and on how they are likely to change in the future. The integration of vast amounts of renewable generation resources along with the addition of new technologies such as energy storage and large amounts of digital technology supporting its design and operation, also known as the smart grid, are presenting many new opportunities and challenges.

This seminar summarizes current and ongoing work at Texas A&M in these two areas, first presenting work in automating the addition of Power Flow Weather (PFW) models into power system planning cases and creating renewable energy “drought” scenarios. This will be followed by a presentation on analysis and visualization of the generator interconnection queues from the 7 independent system operators (ISOs) in the United States.

This presentation will provide an overview of the history of large load interconnections in ERCOT, current challenges, and future initiatives.

This webinar introduces GridAgent 1.0, an LLM-powered AI system that automates professional power system studies through natural language interaction. Attendees will learn how this ChatGPT-like tool performs complex analyses—such as power flow, contingency, and optimal power flow—while maintaining transparency through interpretable reasoning and workflow visualization.

This seminar explores new methods for making multi-agent systems resilient to adversarial attacks, from robust computer-vision models to decentralized anomaly detection in cooperative reinforcement learning.

The TPEC 2026 is an IEEE Industry Application Society (IEEE-IAS) sponsored conference, so all accepted and presented papers are eligible to be invited for review for publication in the IEEE Transactions on Industry Applications or the IEEE Industry Applications Magazine.

Newton-Raphson power flow can converge to an undesired alternative solution when the common flat start initial values can be outside the region of attraction of the operational solution. Using region-of-attraction visualization, we present a computationally lightweight approaches that enhance convergence reliability, applied to power system cases ranging from 2 to 23,600 buses.

Grid-Forming (GFM) and Grid-Following (GFL) inverters are key converters for integrating renewable resources into inverter-dominated power systems. This talk introduces a hybrid GFM–GFL control method based on Virtual Oscillator Control, enabling multi-mode operation and smooth, continuous transitions between different control objectives.

The rise of distributed generation, electric vehicles, demand response, and advanced metering has increased coupling between transmission and distribution networks. Tests on the 150-bus Travis County grid show that back-and-forth co-simulation runs faster with fewer iterations while producing nearly identical voltages to full-system modeling.

This seminar explores the rapidly evolving challenges facing modern electricity grids as power electronics, renewable generation, data centers, and energy storage transform traditional operations. It highlights how maintaining supply-demand balance and reliability now requires revisiting fundamental electrical engineering principles to address this unprecedented wave of change.

An overview of integrated load and power flow modeling to assess and mitigate the impacts of extreme weather on electric power systems.

The gist of this presentation is to help power engineers avoid having their power flows converge to undesired alternative solutions. Usually, but not always, the solution with the highest per unit voltage magnitudes represents the solution at which the power system would actually operate and hence is usually the desired solution. Included in the presentation is recent research in the topic and insights that can be gained from visualizing the power flow solution region of attractions.

This seminar introduces a stochastic framework for frequency stability assessment in renewable-rich power systems. By integrating inverter dynamics, voltage-dependent behavior, and uncertainty into an extended system frequency response model, the framework enables efficient and probabilistic analysis to support reliable future grid operation.

This presentation discusses the main storylines playing out in the Texas electric power sector, as well as why the road to the country’s energy transition necessarily runs through the Lone Star State. Its goal is to help students and faculty better understand how their industry is discussed in the press and why their field matters to everyday people.

This seminar presents an integrated framework that combines generation, weather, and renewable energy data to create a comprehensive simulation model. The goal is to better understand the complexities of modern power systems, where multiple interdependent variables influence grid behavior.

A weather-informed bio-inspired predictive model that adapts to dynamic system changes while accurately forecasting load and renewable generation based on weather conditions and historical data.

This webinar will cover the events identified by ERCOT over the past four years and discuss challenges to address the issues and prevention of larger events as more voltage-sensitive loads connect to the system in the coming years.

This seminar examines how water supply systems, including drinking water distribution and wastewater treatment, can serve as flexible, controllable assets to support the electric power grid. An optimization framework for scheduling and controlling these systems will be presented.

A novel methodology leveraging parallel algorithms and HPC techniques will be presented to tackle complex optimization challenges in modern power systems. This cutting-edge approach enhances system modeling, decision-making, and problem-solving.

Geomagnetic Disturbances (GMDs) are a natural phenomenon that can impact the world, through disturbances in the Earth’s atmosphere and magnetosphere. This seminar details an overview of GMD for the Cyber-Physical Grid.

This work, conducted in collaboration with Electric Power Engineers (EPE), introduces a python tool that identifies critical grid network segments impacted by generator interconnections.

This seminar presents a new formulation that integrates discontinuity constraints into the system frequency estimation framework.

An introduction to the numerical techniques and circuit models used to simulate high-resolution electromagnetic transients.

This seminar will focus on presenting the prediction results of renewable energy generation across different seasons. These predictions are derived using a combination of forecasted and historical weather data.

This presentation covers a novel approach to predict power system conditions utilizing refined weather datasets and predictive models.

Simulating possible worst-case scenario geomagnetic disturbances (GMDs) impact on power grids for low and middle latitudes, using high latitude GMDs data.

This presentation covers recent developments in the modeling of weather and other environmental inputs (such as earthquakes and wildfires) directly into existing power flow and related tools like contingency analysis and optimal power flow.

An overview of EV simulation and integration work focusing on innovative scalable truck charging demand simulation designed to cost-optimize infrastructure planning for freight trucking electrification along the I-45 corridor.

While there has been great enthusiasm towards adopting LLM foundational tools, this talk identifies fruitful directions and limits regarding embedding power system-specific tools, RAG architectures, and data collection safety in the energy sector.

Presentation of cutting-edge work modeling transportation dynamics, unbalanced distribution power flows on an ultra-large-scale grid footprint, and AC power flows on an ERCOT-sized grid syntax.

Explores strategic considerations for resource deployments within ERCOT as well as protective relay fundamentals, design philosophies, and practical modeling guidelines for systems research.

Presents a weighted least squares optimization algorithm designed to map out the active induced electric fields during severe Geomagnetic Disturbances using physical measurements.

Covers automated models for establishing validation paths for synthetic power grid configurations alongside machine learning classifications matching historical grid infrastructure resilience with drought patterns.

Focuses on developing architecture and tools under the SCORE project to aid utility network engineers in establishing solid grid protection, mitigation workflows, and defensive structures under active adversarial conditions.

This webinar provides an overview of the impacts of a High Altitude Electromagnetic Pulse (HEMP) E3 component on large-scale electric grids, discussing late-time GMD-like effects and transformer saturation risks.

We will discuss methods for coordinating sensing and control resources, to strengthen system-wide resilience of power system dynamics.

This presentation will go over what an electric cooperative is and some of the responsibilities of the engineering team at Rayburn Electric Cooperative.

This presentation explores the tuning of exciters and governors in synthetic power grid models, aiming to create stable and realistic systems. The proposed synthetic generator dynamics are implemented in a 37-bus Hawaiian synthetic power system, demonstrating robust performance under various disturbances.

We present an approach to improve the characterization of cyber-physical interdependencies through modeling techniques. These improved assessments of dependencies can then help optimize system design to improve functional resilience.

Key topics related to the nonlinear analysis of electrical networks such as: Advanced Power Electronics Integration, Nonlinear Analysis of Electrical Networks, Sustainable Energy Transmission, and Cutting-Edge Research Insights.

The seminar will be discussing Geomagnetic Disturbances (GMDs) effects on the grid and how to estimate the reliability of the power grid during GMD storms, using a novel framework.

In this seminar, we propose a generative approach to creating a massive amount of line-post insulator fault images through Deep Convolutional Generative Adversarial Networks (DCGAN).

In the field of Electromagnetic transient (EMT) simulation and transient stability analysis, solving the network equations constitutes a significant portion of the computational workload…

This presentation examines the extent to which distinct inter-area electromechanical modes exist in large-scale electric grids. Electric grids oscillate, and these oscillations have often been described using the linear systems concept of modes. However, electric grids are nonlinear systems, and are becoming increasingly nonlinear with the growth of inverter-based controls, deadbands, and other devices that often operate at their limits. Hence adequate linearizations may no longer exist, calling into question the extent to which distinct modes exist. For a mode to exist at an operating point its frequency, damping and shape must be independent of the disturbance used to excite it. The paper shows for one synthetic and two actual models of North American electric grids that these criteria are not always met, particularly for the largest electric grids.

While it is widely recognized that weather impacts the power flow, historically weather information has only been implicitly included. This paper presents an approach for the direct inclusion of weather information in the power flow. Key issues addressed by the paper include the availability of weather information, the mapping of weather information to electric grid components, a flexible and extensible modeling approach for relating weather values to the power flow models, and the visualization of the weather impacts. The approach is demonstrated on several electric grids ranging in size from 7000 to 82,000 buses using weather data over several different years.

This paper examines the extent to which distinct inter-area electromechanical modes exist in large-scale electric grids. Electric grids oscillate, and these oscillations have often been described using the linear systems concept of modes. However, electric grids are nonlinear systems, and are becoming increasingly nonlinear with the growth of inverter-based controls, deadbands, and other devices that often operate at their limits. Hence adequate linearizations may no longer exist, calling into question the extent to which distinct modes exist. For a mode to exist at an operating point its frequency, damping and shape must be independent of the disturbance used to excite it. The paper shows for one synthetic and two actual models of North American electric grids that these criteria are not always met, particularly for the largest electric grids.

An ongoing power system challenge is how best to utilize and ultimately present information to a human user derived from either actual system sensors or engineering studies for large-scale electric grids. In operations this data might come from measurement systems such as SCADA or PMUs, while in a study context it might be generated by a various applications such as power flow and dynamic simulations. This presentation discusses some of the newer visualization techniques that are being deployed by the electric power industry. These include animation, contouring, time-varying graphs, geographic-based displays, image blending, and data aggregation techniques. The techniques are demonstrated using a variety of actual and synthetic electric grids.

Interconnected electric grids are going to play a key role in the development of a sustainable energy future. In the North America about 40% of our energy transported as electricity, a value that should be increasing as transportation becomes more electrified. In order to achieve this vision of a bright future, we need to increase the reliability and resiliency of the electric grid as we become more sustainable.

This presentation explored the evolution of power networks from traditional infrastructure to digitized, decarbonized, and distributed systems.

While it is widely recognized that weather impacts the power flow, historically weather information has only been implicitly included. This paper presents an approach for the direct inclusion of weather information in the power flow. Key issues addressed by the paper include the availability of weather information, the mapping of weather information to electric grid components, a flexible and extensible modeling approach for relating weather values to the power flow models, and the visualization of the weather impacts. The approach is demonstrated on several electric grids ranging in size from 7000 to 82,000 buses using weather data over several different years.

Strategic discussion points on future capacity frameworks, load growth architectures, and risk dynamics inside the ERCOT perimeter and broad US transmission interfaces.

Large-scale electric grids are some of the largest and most complex machines every created, and an ongoing engineering challenge is to analyze, understand, and explain their operation to a variety of different audiences. This requires leveraging the most effective techniques, and throughout history storytelling has proven to be an extremely effective means for conveying information. While the term storytelling often invokes its colloquial meaning of orally communicating a story, more broadly it is defined to encompass a variety of different means of presentation, including the video visualization approach considered here. This presentation shows how power system visualizations can be knitted together to develop an understandable narrative, with a focus on electric grid operations over time periods ranging from seconds to days. The presentation provides examples of storytelling applied to past electric grid operations, present operations, and potential future operational scenarios.

This presentation emphasizes managing the rapid transition of large-scale electric grids to enhance resilience and sustainability through advanced visualization, data analysis, and integration of renewable energy sources. Key strategies include addressing challenges posed by inverter-based resources and using simulation tools to improve grid security and reliability.