Electricity is the lifeblood of modern society, and for the vast majority of people that electricity is obtained from large, interconnected power grids. However, the grid that was developed in the 20th century, and the incremental improvements made since then, including its underlying analytic foundations, is no longer adequate to completely meet the needs of the 21st century. The next-generation electric grid must be more flexible and resilient. While fossil fuels will have their place for decades to come, the grid of the future will need to accommodate a wider mix of more intermittent generating sources such as wind and distributed solar photovoltaics. Achieving this grid of the future will require effort on several fronts. There is a need for continued shorter-term engineering research and development, building on the existing analytic foundations for the grid. But there is also a need for more fundamental research to expand these analytic foundations. Analytic Research Foundations for the Next-Generation Electric Grid provide guidance on the longer-term critical areas for research in mathematical and computational sciences that is needed for the next-generation grid. It offers recommendations that are designed to help direct future research as the grid evolves and to give the nation's research and development infrastructure the tools it needs to effectively develop, test, and use this research.

If the United States is to sustain its economic prosperity, quality of life, and global competitiveness, it must continue to have an abundance of secure, reliable, and affordable energy resources. There have been many improvements in the technology and capability of the electric grid over the past several decades. Many of these advances to the grid depend on complex mathematical algorithms and techniques, and as the complexity of the grid has increased, the analytical demands have also increased. The workshop summarized in this report was developed as part of an ongoing study of the Committee on Analytical Research Foundations for the Next-Generation Electric Grid. Mathematical Sciences Research Challenges for the Next-Generation Electric Grid summarizes the presentations and discussions from this workshop. This report identifies critical areas of mathematical and computational research that must be addressed for the next-generation electric transmission and distribution system and to identify future needs and ways that current research efforts in these areas could be adjusted or augmented.

Americans' safety, productivity, comfort, and convenience depend on the reliable supply of electric power. The electric power system is a complex "cyber-physical" system composed of a network of millions of components spread out across the continent. These components are owned, operated, and regulated by thousands of different entities. Power system operators work hard to assure safe and reliable service, but large outages occasionally happen. Given the nature of the system, there is simply no way that outages can be completely avoided, no matter how much time and money is devoted to such an effort. The system's reliability and resilience can be improved but never made perfect. Thus, system owners, operators, and regulators must prioritize their investments based on potential benefits. Enhancing the Resilience of the Nation's Electricity System focuses on identifying, developing, and implementing strategies to increase the power system's resilience in the face of events that can cause large-area, long-duration outages: blackouts that extend over multiple service areas and last several days or longer. Resilience is not just about lessening the likelihood that these outages will occur. It is also about limiting the scope and impact of outages when they do occur, restoring power rapidly afterwards, and learning from these experiences to better deal with events in the future.

The groundbreaking book that details the fundamentals of reliability modeling and evaluation and introduces new and future technologies Electric Power Grid Reliability Evaluation deals with the effective evaluation of the electric power grid and explores the role that this process plays in the planning and designing of the expansion of the power grid. The book is a guide to the theoretical approaches and processes that underpin the electric power grid and reviews the most current and emerging technologies designed to ensure reliability. The authors—noted experts in the field—also present the algorithms that have been developed for analyzing the soundness of the power grid. A comprehensive resource, the book covers probability theory, stochastic processes, and a frequency-based approach in order to provide a theoretical foundation for reliability analysis. Throughout the book, the concepts presented are explained with illustrative examples that connect with power systems. The authors cover generation adequacy methods, and multi-node analysis which includes both multi-area as well as composite power system reliable evaluation. This important book: • Provides a guide to the basic methods of reliability modeling and evaluation • Contains a helpful review of the background of power system reliability evaluation • Includes information on new technology sources that have the potential to create a more reliable power grid • Addresses renewable energy sources and shows how they affect power outages and blackouts that pose new challenges to the power grid system Written for engineering students and professionals, Electric Power Grid Reliability Evaluation is an essential book that explores the processes and algorithms for creating a sound and reliable power grid.

Securing the Smart Grid discusses the features of the smart grid, particularly its strengths and weaknesses, to better understand threats and attacks, and to prevent insecure deployments of smart grid technologies. A smart grid is a modernized electric grid that uses information and communications technology to be able to process information, such as the behaviors of suppliers and consumers. The book discusses different infrastructures in a smart grid, such as the automatic metering infrastructure (AMI). It also discusses the controls that consumers, device manufacturers, and utility companies can use to minimize the risk associated with the smart grid. It explains the smart grid components in detail so readers can understand how the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of these components can be secured or compromised. This book will be a valuable reference for readers who secure the networks of smart grid deployments, as well as consumers who use smart grid devices. - Details how old and new hacking techniques can be used against the grid and how to defend against them - Discusses current security initiatives and how they fall short of what is needed - Find out how hackers can use the new infrastructure against itself

"For well over a century, electricity has made vital contributions to the growth of the U.S. economy and the quality of American life. The U.S. electric grid is a remarkable achievement, linking electric generation units reliably and efficiently to millions of residential, commercial, and industrial users of electricity through more than six million miles of lines and associated equipment that are designed and managed by more than 3,000 organizations, many of which are in turn regulated by both federal and state agencies. While this remarkable system of systems will continue to serve us well, it will face serious challenges in the next two decades that will demand the intelligent use of new technologies and the adoption of more appropriate regulatory policies. This report aims to provide a comprehensive, objective portrait of the U.S. electric grid and the challenges and opportunities it is likely to face over the next two decades. It also highlights a number of areas in which policy changes, focused research and demonstration, and the collection and sharing of important data can facilitate meeting the challenges and seizing the opportunities that the grid will face. This study is the sixth in the MIT Energy Initiative's "Future of" series."

Electric power is essential for the lives and livelihoods of all Americans, and the need for electricity that is safe, clean, affordable, and reliable will only grow in the decades to come. At the request of Congress and the Department of Energy, the National Academies convened a committee of experts to undertake a comprehensive evaluation of the U.S. grid and how it how it might evolve in response to advances in new energy technologies, changes in demand, and future innovation. The Future of Electric Power in the United States presents an extensive set of policy and funding recommendations aimed at modernizing the U.S. electric system. The report addresses technology development, operations, grid architectures, and business practices, as well as ways to make the electricity system safe, secure, sustainable, equitable, and resilient.

A component in the America's Energy Future study, Electricity from Renewable Resources examines the technical potential for electric power generation with alternative sources such as wind, solar-photovoltaic, geothermal, solar-thermal, hydroelectric, and other renewable sources. The book focuses on those renewable sources that show the most promise for initial commercial deployment within 10 years and will lead to a substantial impact on the U.S. energy system. A quantitative characterization of technologies, this book lays out expectations of costs, performance, and impacts, as well as barriers and research and development needs. In addition to a principal focus on renewable energy technologies for power generation, the book addresses the challenges of incorporating such technologies into the power grid, as well as potential improvements in the national electricity grid that could enable better and more extensive utilization of wind, solar-thermal, solar photovoltaics, and other renewable technologies.

This monograph presents a possible research agenda for analytics and control of a deep decarbonized electric grid with pervasive data, interactive consumers, and power electronics interfaces. It focuses on new lines of investigation that are driven by new technological, economical, and policy factors. Conventional monitoring and control of the power grid heavily depends upon the physical principles of the underlying engineering systems. There is however increasing complexity of the physical models compounded by a lack of precise knowledge of their parameters, as well as new uncertainties arising from behavioral, economic, and environmental aspects. On the other hand there is increasing availability of sensory data in the engineering and economic operations and it becomes attractive to leverage such data to model, monitor, analyze, and potentially close control loops over data. The increasing deployment of large numbers of Phasor Measurement Units (PMUs) provides the potential for providing timely and actionable information about the transmission system. Chapter 2 examines a framework for drastically reducing the dimensionality of the high volume streaming data, while preserving its salient features for purposes such as event detection, classification and visualization, and potentially even to close the loop around the data. Driven by the deepening penetration of renewable energy resources at both transmission and distribution levels, there is an increasing need for utilizing power electronics interfaces as intelligent devices to benefit the overall grid. Chapter 3 offers a conceptual design and concrete examples of a qualitatively different power grid stabilization mechanism in the context of networked microgrids. Another major paradigm change in the operation of the grid is that demand will have to be engaged much more to balance the partially variable renewable energy supply, which in turn requires greater understanding of human behavior to economic variables such as price. Chapter 4 presents a possible formulation to model the behavior of individual consumers in future grid operations. Chapter 5 presents a proposed solution to the problem of detecting attacks on the sensor measurements in the grid, which has become a greater concern with increasing reliance on sensor data transported over communication networks, with both sensors and networks liable to malicious cyber-attacks. The goal of this monograph is to design clean, affordable, reliable, secure, and efficient electricity services. and to expand the horizon of the state of the research in the electric energy systems, at a critical time that is seeing the emergence of Grid 3.0. It is by no means complete and aims to stimulate research by next generation researchers.

The Power Grid: Smart, Secure, Green and Reliable offers a diverse look at the traditional engineering and physics aspects of power systems, also examining the issues affecting clean power generation, power distribution, and the new security issues that could potentially affect the availability and reliability of the grid. The book looks at growth in new loads that are consuming over 1% of all the electrical power produced, and how combining those load issues of getting power to the regions experiencing growth in energy demand can be addressed. In addition, it considers the policy issues surrounding transmission line approval by regulators. With truly multidisciplinary content, including failure analysis of various systems, photovoltaic, wind power, quality issues with clean power, high-voltage DC transmission, electromagnetic radiation, electromagnetic interference, privacy concerns, and data security, this reference is relevant to anyone interested in the broad area of power grid stability. - Discusses state–of-the-art trends and issues in power grid reliability - Offers guidance on purchasing or investing in new technologies - Includes a technical document relevant to public policy that can help all stakeholders understand the technical issues facing a green, secure power grid