USC Viterbi Faculty Led-Research to Receive Over $1.8 Million in Funding from US DOE SunShot Initiative

Faculty-led research by a team at the USC Viterbi School of Engineering will assist with the nation’s efforts to integrate solar energy into the grid. The team co-led by Prasanna, the Director of USC Viterbi’s Center for Energy Informatics was awarded $1.8 million for research from Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy SunShot Initiative. The SunShot Initiative has awarded up to $30 million to 13 new projects to support the integration of solar energy into the nation’s electric grid and develop next-generation grid planning. The projects are under the ENERGISE funding program.

The U.S. Department of Energy SunShot Initiative is a national effort to drive down the cost of solar electricity and support solar adoption. SunShot aims to make solar energy a low-cost electricity source for all Americans through research and development efforts in collaboration with public and private partners.

Prasanna and co-principal investigator Rajgopal Kannan, a research associate in the Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical Engineering are tasked with integrating a very large number of rooftop solar energy sources from residential and commercial users into the power grid and ensure it operates as planned.

The grant will enable the development of next generation smartgrid technology through cutting edge techniques in data driven modeling, highly accurate and rapid predictive analytics and optimizations.The project will develop novel representations and visualizations of the energy states of grid components potentially leading to a new Internet of Energy infrastructure. The grant will also support 3-4 graduate students. The researchers will also be working with utility companies to test their research.

“We are excited to study large-scale operational cyber-physical systems with real-time data analytics. The project will have great pubic impact by leading to a highly integrated smartgrid of user components, improving grid security, reliability and operations during critical conditions,” said Prasanna. 

Published on February 20th, 2017

Last updated on November 7th, 2017