Peng Zhang, Ph.D, is Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and an Affiliate Professor of Computer Science and Applied Mathematics and Statistics at Stony Brook University, New York. He has published widely on microgrids, networked microgrid systems and quantum-engineered smart grids.
What is your background?
I am a Full Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Stony Brook University, one of the flagship institutions of The State University of New York (SUNY) system. I also hold the title of SUNY Empire Innovation Professor. I earned my Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from the University of British Columbia, Vancouver. Before starting my academic career, I worked at BC Hydro in Canada, where I planned and commissioned British Columbia’s Bear Mountain Wind Project and contributed to the planning of 2 gigawatts of wind generation projects and the development of BC Hydro’s remedial action schemes. With sponsorship from various federal and state agencies, as well as the power industry, I pioneered several subareas, including quantum-engineered resilient power grids (Quantum Grids), software-defined smart grids, and programmable microgrids. My recent research interests also include AI-enabled smart grids, cybersecurity, formal methods, and reachability analysis. I am the author of Networked Microgrids, published by Cambridge University Press, and the founding editor of the IEEE Press Offshore Wind Energy Collection. In sum, I am a teacher and researcher, and power engineer at heart.
What are the most profound changes you have seen in your field across your career?
In August 2003, shortly after I arrived in Canada following my studies at Tsinghua University in China, the Northeast blackout occurred. This event, among others, led to visible changes in the North American power industry. The power engineering education and job market, which had significantly declined, experienced a revival. From a technical standpoint, major changes included the introduction and adoption of modern technologies such as information technologies, microgrids, artificial intelligence, and even quantum information sciences in the power industry. In this sense, our new book, Microgrids: Theory and Practice, serves as a record reflecting some foundational changes taking place in the power industry.
What motivated you to write Microgrids: Theory and Practice?
In recent decades, the US has faced numerous power blackouts due to extreme events like winter storms and wildfires, leaving many communities with poor electricity reliability. Microgrids offer a promising solution by coordinating local loads, distributed energy resources, and storage to provide continuous energy supply. Networked microgrids can further enhance resilience for customers and utilities. Despite their potential, microgrids face challenges such as high costs and emerging cyber-physical attacks. These issues have spurred global research efforts to develop flexible, affordable, and resilient microgrids. Industry and academia have gained valuable experience in microgrid design, planning, and operation. To document these advancements, I collaborated with eminent power engineers and researchers worldwide to produce this comprehensive two-volume reference book, Microgrids: Theory and Practice. The book writing began just before the Christmas holiday in 2021, and the book was printed in the spring of 2024.
Who is the primary audience for Microgrids: Theory and Practice?
The primary audience for this book includes professionals across various sectors, as well as university students and faculty. A key feature of this book is the incorporation of numerous new cyber-physical system technologies to enable microgrids as resiliency resources, going beyond the standard topics of microgrid modeling, control, and optimization. The book offers in-depth theories and hands-on microgrid design and operation experiences to address microgrid and resiliency challenges, making it a valuable reference for engineers and managers. Additionally, the book contains self-contained chapters and many well-designed exercises. Instructors can flexibly select a subset of the chapters to design a one-semester course, two semester-long courses, or adopt some chapters for graduate certificate programs, training courses, or micro-credential courses.
What are the key challenges this audience faces?
Microgrids are a promising yet often costly solution for communities. Our audience consists of individuals seeking reliable and affordable microgrid solutions. Currently, there is a lack of comprehensive reference books that cover both the theoretical foundations and engineering techniques necessary for enabling cyber-physical resilience and economical operations of microgrids.
How does your book solve this need/challenge?
Our book summarizes ongoing cutting-edge research and practices addressing the key challenges mentioned above. A salient feature is the incorporation of new cyber-physical system technologies to enable microgrids as resiliency resources. Additionally, it includes hard-to-find information, such as in-depth theories and hands-on microgrid design and operation experiences including selected real-world projects involving designing, operating, and maintaining microgrids. Very advanced topics, such as AI and quantum information science-inspired solutions, are also detailed in multiple chapters. Each technical chapter is written in a self-contained matter, so that the audience can start out easily by reading selected chapters to master how to analyze, design, and operate microgrids and networked microgrid systems.
What have been the biggest rewards?
We believe this book will inspire many readers, especially young engineers and students, to enter the renewable energy and microgrid fields. The chapters in our book serve as excellent starting points for delving into various new directions. As authors, one of our greatest rewards will be seeing this inspiration take root.
The second significant reward for us is seeing the experiences summarized in this book applied to real-world projects. In addition to the various ongoing projects mentioned in this book, our colleagues and collaborators are actively involved in several microgrid and smart community projects across different industry and defense sectors. Consequently, our theories and practical techniques will lead to real advances in electricity resilience for our communities, and they will continue to grow and improve through these practices.
What unique features do you think make the book stand out in the market?
The unification of novelty and practicality is a unique feature of this book. Our readers will be excited to discover a wealth of novel ideas detailed and elaborated in one place: AI-enabled programmable microgrids, fast generic power flow algorithms, dynamic state and parameter estimation, delayed eigenanalysis, learning-based dynamic model discovery, learning-based transient stability, traveling wave applications, in situ resilience quantification, droop-free distributed control, cyber-resilient controls, crypto-control, transactive energy management, attack-resilient sensing and communication, quantum security for microgrids, and more. Meanwhile, sixteen teams have shared their practical experiences in designing and operating microgrids, covering a broad spectrum of topics. These include building community microgrids, resilience assurance in Navy microgrids, self-organizing sensor systems, and a series of Microgrid as a Service technologies, such as sharing economy in microgrids, rural electrification, operational optimization, and hydrogen-supported microgrids. Many of these new theories will, over time, become future practices deployed in modern microgrids.
What current projects are you working on?
Microgrids and networked microgrids remain my primary focus areas; my team is assisting various stakeholders in designing and improving their microgrids. Additionally, I am conducting research projects on topics such as quantum-engineered resilient power grids, AI-enabled smart grids, resilience and stability theory, offshore wind energy, formal methods and reachability analysis, and software-defined smart grids.
What problems are you trying to solve?
My research focuses on solving cyber-physical resilience problems, including monitoring, detecting, and mitigating cyberattacks, physical disturbances, and extreme events on microgrids and networked microgrids, urban distribution grids, substations, and bulk power networks. My research program is dedicated to enabling innovations across different layers of grid infrastructures and building autonomic energy systems. These systems integrate AI, real-time edge computing, formal methods, and Internet of Things technologies to create a scalable, self-configurable, plug-and-play next-generation smart grid capable of coordinating ultra-scale distributed energy systems and fostering America’s smart communities and cities.
Where can we find you online?
My website at Stony Brook is http://www.ece.stonybrook.edu/~pzhang