
Venkata DinavahiUniversity of Alberta | UAlberta · Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Venkata Dinavahi
PhD PEng FIEEE FEIC
Power Systems+Electronics, Real-Time Simulation, Sustainable Energy, Small Modular Reactors, Electrified Transportation
About
349
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Introduction
Education
September 1996 - November 2000
June 1994 - June 1996
May 1989 - May 1993
Publications
Publications (349)
Electro magnetics (EM) Finite-difference-time domain (FDTD) Finite element method (FEM) Method of moments (moM) Partial element equivalent circuit (PEEC) Power electronics modelling A B S T R A C T Computational electromagnetics (CEM) simulation is employed in diverse applications to analyze electromagnetic (EM) fields and waves, providing critical...
This paper presents a brief overview of the development history, advantages, disadvantages, and application scenarios of small modular reactors (SMRs). It explores relevant simulation technologies, human–system interfaces (HSIs), and instrumentation and control (I&C) systems. Particular attention is given to the integration of advanced digital tech...
This paper presents a novel small-signal stability margin (SSSM) constrained optimal power flow model for generation dispatch to minimize the generation cost while retaining adequate SSSM. The SSSM constraint is described in terms of the total active load variation between an initial operating point and the critical point, which is located on the d...
Electromagnetic (EM) equipments are ubiquitous in electrical power generation, transmission, and distribution systems, and they should be studied for reliable and continuous operation under switching operations, faults, and other transient conditions. Conventional lumped models lack the capability to consider EM field interactions, while distribute...
Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellite networks, like SpaceX's Starlink, offer enhanced communication potential for contemporary power grid measurement and control. Yet, the dynamic nature of these networks complicates their modeling and simulation. This study introduces a modular, data-oriented digital twin framework for real-time simulation of wide-area...
The partial element equivalent circuit (PEEC) method effectively solves Maxwell’s equations in integral form by converting electromagnetic field components into the electrical circuit domain. This article proposes a novel transmission line modeling (TLM) based parallel PEEC time-domain solver to solve nonlinear electromagnetic problems. The method...
This paper presents the detailed nonlinear mathematical model of a 1400MW hydro power plant (HPP) and it’s faster than real-time dynamic emulation on hardware architecture of the field programmable gate arrays (FPGA). This model is used to study the interactive effect of hydro turbine governor system (HTGS) and power system stabilizer (PSS) in nonl...
For the integration of large-scale renewable energy resources into power grids, the complex and dynamic behavior of Inverter-Based Resources (IBRs), such as wind farms, photovoltaic (PV) arrays, and battery energy storage systems (BESSs), poses significant challenges. Traditional models often fall short of feasibly simulating these resources at sca...
Multi-stakeholder participation is crucial in facilitating the development of park-integrated energy systems (PIES). Balancing the diverse interests of various stakeholders, each with its distinct requirements presents a notable challenge. Concurrently, the model's complexity increases due to the engagement of various stakeholders, posing challenge...
Renewable energy systems (RESs) are pivotal in the transition to eco-friendly smart grids. The complexity and uncertainty of RESs, driven by uncontrollable natural forces like sunlight and wind, bring challenges to integrating RESs into modern power systems. Electromagnetic transient (EMT) simulation is an effective method for studying the integrat...
To alleviate the communication, storage, and computation burden on the control center and make full use of edge computing resources, fully distributed state estimation has received increasing interest recently. This paper intends to improve the efficiency and robustness of the fully distributed state estimation by introducing a meter-level method b...
Hybrid MMC (Hy-MMC) has broad application prospects because of the negative level output ability in its bridge arm. A Hy-MMC topology with high-modulation ratio is designed in this paper. A second-harmonic current injection (SHCI) strategy based on Hy-MMC in high-modulation operation is also proposed to effectively improve the power density of Hy-M...
Integration of renewable energy is increasingly prevalent, yet its stochasticity may compromise the stability of the power system. In this paper, a high-voltage dc (HVDC) link model based on the modular multilevel converter with embedded energy storage (MMC-EES) is presented and, utilizing the massively parallel computing feature of the graphics pr...
This paper provides a review of the most recent advances in artificial intelligence (AI) as applied to computational electromagnetics (CEM) to address challenges and unlock opportunities in power system applications. It is intended to provide readers and practitioners in electromagnetics (EM) and related applicable fields with valuable perspectives...
Small modular reactors (SMRs) are gaining significant attention as a promising solution to address the global energy demand and simulation is pivotal in expediting the construction of SMRs. However, the point-reactor neutron-kinetics equations of SMRs are strongly stiff nonlinear ordinary differential equations (ODEs), which poses a great difficult...
With the increasing demand for power system stability and resilience, effective real-time tracking plays a crucial role in smart grid synchronization. However, most studies have focused on measurement noise, while they seldom think about the problem of measurement data loss in smart power grid synchronization. To solve this problem, a resilient fau...
This paper develops an adaptive two-stage unscented Kalman filter (ATSUKF) to accurately track operation states of the synchronous generator (SG) under cyber attacks. To achieve high fidelity, considering the excitation system of SGs, a detailed 9
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The phasor measurement units (PMUs), which are widely distributed at key nodes in the power network, provide a large amount of measurement information for dynamic state estimation. An accurate model is the foundation for ensuring dynamic state estimation. However, due to uncertain factors such as cyber-attacks, aging of device components and differ...
A small modular reactor (SMR) is a nuclear reactor that is characterized by its smaller size and capacity when compared to traditional large-scale nuclear reactors. An SMR is often categorized as having an electrical output of less than 300MW and is built to be more mobile, safe, and extensible to deploy. It has been established that SMRs can provi...
The important role of small modular reactors (SMRs) in global energy production is highlighted by their substantial contribution toward clean, consistent, and high-capacity electrical power. These reactors are instrumental in the shift towards energy sources that mitigate carbon emissions and support sustainable development goals. Among the various...
International space station (ISS) is a grand invention for human beings to have a chance at exploring the outer space. Its operation is completely dependent on the autonomous power distribution system which transforms energy by solar arrays from the sun. There is a high demand for a reliable monitoring system that can accurately and timely detect a...
Proton exchange membrane fuel cells (PEMFCs) are becoming increasingly common in modern marine electric vessels , helping achieve the sustainable development objective of lowered emissions and zero-emission marine transportation. This article introduces a hierarchical hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) emulation scheme for the zero-emission marine vessel a...
The proliferation of artificial intelligence (AI) has opened up new avenues for the modeling of power electronics with ultra-fast transient responses, such as wide-bandgap (WBG) devices. This paper highlights the significance of ultra-fast transient device-level hardware emulation for the DC railway microgrid (DRM) in real-time. To this end, the pr...
To mitigate the data transmission burden, an new memory event-trigger scheme is developed for the load frequency control (LFC) of multi-area networked power systems with the integration of various new energy sources. Hinfinity stability criteria under less conservative conditions are established by utilizing an improved Lyapunov stability theory an...
Accurate tracking the dynamics of power system plays a significant role in its reliability, resilience and security. To achieve the reliable and precise estimation results, many advanced estimation methods have been developed. However, most of them are aiming at filtering the measurement noise, while the adverse affect of partial measurement missin...
In power system simulation, the mathematical solution methods are typically regarded as pure numerical operations, which are independent of the circuit principles. In this letter, it is demonstrated that the computational procedures in the commonly used numerical solution methods for circuit equations are essentially equivalent to the basic princip...
Maritime industries desire high speed and reliability, low lifespan cost, and environmental impact shipping for transportation. Compared to highly congested land shipments and high-cost air freight, all-electric ship (AES) can reduce the lifespan energy consumption and transport a considerable freight volume at a lower rate. Recently, the medium vo...
Modular multi‐level converters (MMCs) are a mainstay in many HVDC transmission projects worldwide. Half‐bridge MMC (HB‐MMC) is mostly used in the current project. The large capacitor of sub modules (SMs) is often required in MMC to ensure the low voltage ripple. Here, the three‐stage switching MMC (TSS‐MMC) topology is proposed, which can greatly r...
Marine research vessels (MRVs) are redesigned and refurbished to meet higher energy conversion efficiency and modular integration schemes while conforming to stronger environmental regulations. The proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC) is currently regarded as a potential power source for marine transportation applications due to its advantage...
Accurate estimation of dynamic states is the key to monitoring power system operating conditions and controlling transient stability. However, the inevitable non-Gaussian noise and randomly occurring denial-of-service (DoS) attacks may deteriorate the performance of standard filters seriously. To deal with these issues, a novel resilient cubature K...
Modern network and communication technologies are essential for the implementation and operation of load frequency control (LFC) systems. The measurements of crucial LFC system parameters will be compromised by attackers, rendering data received by the defence inaccurate and causing frequency fluctuations or even system collapse. To detect the pote...
ECS-Grid is the first data-oriented real-time electromagnetic
transient simulation platform for cyber-physical power
systems (CPPS). Traditional simulation tools are constrained
by object-oriented programming (OOP) architecture, which is
now a significant obstruction to creating a comprehensive cyberphysical
simulation. Therefore, the proposed ECS-...
Our recently published journal article "Machine Learning Based Transient Stability Emulation and Dynamic System Equivalencing of Large-Scale AC-DC Grids for Faster-Than-Real-Time Digital Twin" was featured by IEEE Access as the "Article of the Week" during Feb. 3-10, 2023 on its website and various social media platforms. The full text of the artic...
Short-term load forecasting is mainly utilized in control centers to explore the changing patterns of consumer loads and predict the load value at a certain time in the future. It is one of the key technologies for the smart grid implementation. The load parameters are affected by multi-dimensional factors. To sufficiently exploit the time series c...
A list that represents the top 2 percent of the most-cited scientists across 22 scientific fields and 176 sub-fields was recently released. The report was prepared by a team of experts led by Professor John Ioannidis at Stanford University. The list named me at No. 208,608 in the world ranking 2905 / 321,394 in the Energy sub-field of the Enabling...
Fault diagnosis and bounce reduction of electromagnetic
actuators require one to obtain the electromechanical
transient characteristics (ETCs) in real-time. ETCs can be
measured by sensors, but due to their large size and intrusiveness,
the approach has its limitations. Acquiring ETCs through finite
element method (FEM) could be an alternative, exc...
Power converter design evaluation by means of real-time simulation techniques is prevalent, although it is mostly restricted to simple power semiconductor switch models that exclude device-level physical details. In this work, the nonlinear high-order electro-thermal model of the Insulated-gate bipolar transistor (IGBT) is developed and then deploy...
The increasing complexity of modern AC/DC power
systems poses a significant challenge to a fast solution of largescale
transient stability simulation problems. This paper proposes
the hybrid parallel-in-time-and-space (PiT+PiS) transient
simulation on the CPU-GPU platform to thoroughly exploit the
parallelism from time and spatial perspectives, the...
Enhanced environmental standards are leading to
an increasing proportion of microgrids (MGs) being integrated
with renewable energy resources in modern power systems, which
brings new challenges to simulate such a complex system. In
this work, comprehensive modeling of a grid of microgrids for
faster-than-real-time (FTRT) emulation is proposed, whi...
In the wide area measurement system (WAMS) of
smart grid, the real-time monitoring and protection applications
have stringent requirements for the end-to-end transmission
delays between PMUs and PDC, and fast failover is required to
ensure the communication performance after link failures. In this
work, the software-defined network (SDN) technology...
Modern power systems have been expanding significantly including the integration of high voltage direct current (HVDC) systems, bringing a tremendous computational challenge to transient stability simulation for dynamic security assessment (DSA). In this work, a practical method for energy control center with the machine learning (ML) based synchro...
The application of artificial intelligence (AI) technology
in the field of power systems and power electronic devices is
increasingly prevalent.With massive datasets generated by a wide
range of equipment, AI-based modeling is promising in the future
of hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) emulation. This paper studies and
improves the machine learning (ML)...
With the expansion of smart grid infrastructure
world-wide, modeling the interaction between power systems
and communication networks becomes paramount and has created
a new challenge of co-simulating the two domains before
commissioning. Existing co-simulation methods mostly concentrate
on the off-line software-level interface design to synchroniz...
The finite-element analysis is a powerful method to obtain detailed insight into the operation
of any electromagnetic equipment. However, the required computational power to solve a finite-element
modeled power equipment is so heavy that most Newton-Raphson-method-based algorithms can barely
achieve real-time simulation. The low latency and hardwar...
The information and communication technology
(ICT) is increasingly involved in the measurement, operation,
control and protection of the cyber-physical power system
(CPPS). As one of the most promising communication infrastructure
projects, Starlink is a satellite Internet constellation
being constructed by SpaceX for providing global Internet
acce...
A nuclear submarine has significant performance advantages over the conventional dieselelectric
submarine. Its powerful nuclear propulsion can be operated independently of air and does not
require refueling throughout the 25-year life span. Recent progresses of medium voltage direct current
(MVDC) techniques applied in industry push the energy-savi...
This chapter introduces methods that accelerate electromagnetic transient simulation and dynamic simulation other than solely relying on massive parallelism facilitated by graphics processors. Variable time-stepping schemes properly utilize distinct requirements on the density of results under the steady-state and transient stages, and their scopes...
The chapter introduces parallel processing approaches for efficient simulation of various modular multilevel converter (MMC)-based systems with device-level power semiconductor switches. A generic methodology for large-scale multiterminal DC grid massive parallel simulation on the GPU is first presented wherein three levels of circuit partitioning...
In this chapter a GPU-based transient stability simulation is introduced for large-scale power systems. Detailed synchronous generator modeling is utilized in the transient stability problem formulation. Taking advantage of the SIMD architecture of the GPU, two programming models are proposed in the transient stability simulation. In the first mode...
This chapter introduces a fine-grained decomposition method for sparse linear and nonlinear AC networks for large-scale EMT simulation implemented on a GPU-based parallel computing system. Taking into account the EMT simulation with detailed, nonlinear component models and the particular features of GPU-based computing, the large-scale sparse linea...
In this chapter, parallel-in-time solution method is introduced for the EMT and transient stability simulation. A component-based simulation class architecture was introduced to handle different models in AC power systems, which delivers high flexibility and scalability to implement the system-level parallel-in-time algorithm. Major challenges to h...
This chapter provides a brief overview of the evolution of the graphics processor; its hardware architecture, CUDA abstraction, and the parallel programming paradigm were provided in this chapter. The important characteristics of the computing system, including massive numbers of cores, SIMT execution, memory bandwidth, CUDA abstract and concurrent...
In this chapter, four multi-physics modeling and simulation problems are presented, and their massively parallel implementations on the GPU are carried out to showcase acceleration advantages. First, a component-level 2-D finite element modeling and simulation of the solid-state transformer are presented. Then, an integrated thermo-electromagnetic...
This chapter introduces three nonlinear device-level power semiconductor switch models for electromagnetic transient simulation of power electronics converters. The IGBT behavioral model imitates the performance of an actual device by using fundamental circuit components, and the dynamic model describes the IGBT from a structural point of view, whi...
This textbook introduces methods of accelerating transient stability (dynamic) simulation and electromagnetic transient simulation on massively parallel processors for large-scale AC-DC grids – two of the most common and computationally onerous studies done by energy control centers and research laboratories for the planning, design, and operation...
For being the world’s largest low voltage direct current (LVDC) microgrid (MG) in space, the power generation and distribution systems aboard the International Space Station (ISS) employ a hierarchical assortment of electric power sources, energy storage, control devices, power electronics, and loads operating cooperatively at multifarious system d...
The rapid expansion of modern power systems
has brought a tremendous computational challenge to dynamic
security analysis (DSA) tools which consequently need to process
extensive contingencies. In this work, hardware emulation is
investigated to accelerate the DSA solution of a large-scale AC/DC
system deployed on the field-programmable gate arrays...
Abstract—Due to the unfavorable interference of non-Gaussian
noise, abnormal system states, and rough measurement errors,
dynamic state estimation (DSE) plays an important role in the
safe operation of power system. A novel DSE method based on an
adaptive cubature Kalman filter (CKF) with generalized
correntropy loss (GCL) criterion, termed AGCLCKF...
Real-time device-level multi-domain emulation can provide an accurate insight into behavioral transients
of the hydrogen fuel-cell hybrid electric bus (HEB). However, the conventional electromagnetic transient
(EMT) simulation suffers from the computation burden caused by the complex multi-domain subsystems.
This paper develops a hybrid recurrent n...
Extensive integration of power electronics apparatuses
complicates the modern power grid and consequently
necessitates time-domain transients study for its planning and
operation. In this work, a heterogeneous computing architecture
utilizing the CPU and graphics processing unit (GPU)
is proposed for the efficient study of interactions between a
po...
The finite element method (FEM) is commonly
used in modeling the electromagnetic field of transformers with
high accuracy; however, the computation time of the FEM is
prohibitively high for real-time simulation due to high model
order. Reducing the model order is helpful to improve the
computational efficiency of the FEM. The proper orthogonal
deco...
In the wide area measurement system (WAMS), the end-to-end transmission delay between the phasor measurement unit (PMU) and phasor data concentrator (PDC) is strictly constrained for real-time monitoring and protection applications. When a communication link failure happens, fast path recovery is required to reduce the impact of measurement losses....
Large-scale photovoltaic (PV) power plant has witnessed a dramatic increase in the integration into transmission and distribution network, manifesting subsynchronous control interaction (SSCI) when the host grid is weak. In this work, the oscillation modes of a typical PV network are analyzed, and a faster-than-real-time (FTRT) emulation is propose...
Abstract The electromagnetic transient (EMT) simulation of multi‐terminal DC (MTDC) grids requires a detailed device‐level modular multilevel converter (MMC) model, which can have thousands of state variables and complex internal structures. The fast device‐level insulated gate bipolar transistor (IGBT) transient requires a very small time‐step, ma...
A power transformer is an essential infrastructure in power systems for transmission and distribution of electrical energy. The transformer models in the literature for electromagnetic transient analysis can be classified mainly into three types: lumped admittance‐based model, topology‐based magnetic equivalent circuit (MEC) model, and finite eleme...
Protective relays make the trip decisions based on power system quantities such voltage, current, frequency, etc. In the industry, protective relays have experienced mainly three generations of evolution: electromechanical relays, solid‐state relays, and numerical relays. This chapter presents a multifunction protection system based on the hardware...
Rotating electrical machines are used over a wide voltage and power ratings either as generators or motors in numerous applications in power systems, and their accurate modeling is paramount for electromagnetic transient simulation. This chapter presents a unified framework for field programmable gate array (FPGA)‐based real‐time emulation of rotat...
The very spontaneous formation of multiterminal direct current systems leads to the coexistence of access controller and direct current networks that are interactive, making the power electronics‐integrated power system more complex than a single grid. This chapter presents a functional decomposition method that is ideally suited for paralleled and...
Using field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) as the core computational engine, this chapter proposes the concept of hardware emulation building blocks for the real‐time simulation of power grids. It describes the process of implementing a real‐time electromagnetic transient (EMT)simulator on a single FPGA. The FPGA is used to emulate the fundamenta...
The voltage source converters (VSCs) including the access controller/direct current (AC/DC) and DC/AC types categorized as the rectifier and inverter, respectively, are the interfaces that interlink the AC grid and its DC counterpart. They are uniformly named as the AC–DC converter, which has mainly three configurations, that is, the two‐level VSC,...
The credibility and the capability of electro‐magnetic transient‐type solvers in providing all the required information are heavily dependent on the modeling of power semiconductor switches that are fundamental in the construction of all power electronic apparatus. Categorized according to the complexity, seven types of computational models for the...
This chapter presents the modeling and hardware implementation of two prevalent DC circuit breakers, the insulated gate bipolar transistor (IGBT)‐based hybrid HVDC breaker (HHB) and the ultra‐fast mechatronic circuit breaker employing thyristors. Circuit dimension reduction is applied to alleviate the computational burden so as to attain real‐time...
Since transients can happen in just few tens of microseconds and the overvoltages can be multiple times the corresponding ratings, small time‐steps are required for the electro‐magnetic transient (EMT) simulation to accurately capture the transient behavior. The selection of time‐stepping scheme is related to the nonlinear element solution method,...