America’s energy grid is described as the world’s largest machine. More than 11,000 power plants send electricity through 600,000 miles of high-voltage transmission lines and 6 million miles of local distribution lines to customers in almost every corner of the country.
The grid also may be the world’s most impressive balancing act, since electricity supply and demand need to match each other in real time, all the time, to maintain the voltages and current flows that power society. Such a task seems almost impossible, but it’s getting even harder due to significant industrial, societal and climatic changes. Assistant Professor Anamitra Pal leads award-winning work to apply robust statistics and machine learning to real-time data for better monitoring and control of our national electric power infrastructure. Photo by Erika Gronek/ASU Download Full Image
“New sources of power generation, such as solar and wind, are coming online, as well as new types of loads, such as electric vehicles,” says Anamitra Pal, an assistant professor of electrical engineering in the Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering at Arizona State University. “At the same time, we see the increasing frequency and intensity of extreme weather events, such as hurricanes and wildfires. The combination of these elements represents a major challenge to the reliable and resilient operation of the electric power grid during the coming decade and beyond.”
Pal says there is an urgent need for more high-speed, high-precision monitoring, protection and control systems to support our national electric power infrastructure. Making that happen requires more high-fidelity sensor devices being judiciously positioned across the grid network.
But adding these sensors will be costly, and efficiently handling the data they produce will be challenging. Big data analytics are necessary to extract the most useful information from the vast amounts of additional sensor input.
Toward that end, Pal is conducting new research supported by a 2022 National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development Program (CAREER) Award. CAREER award recognition is reserved for young researchers who show the potential to be academic role models and advance the missions of their organizations. Awardees each receive $500,000 distributed across five years to further their work.
Pal’s efforts are focusing on time-synchronized measurements within power systems. These measurements are units of data that have time stamps associated with them, usually through a global positioning system, or GPS, signal.
Examples of devices that produce time-synchronized data are phasor measurement units, or PMUs, in high-voltage transmission systems, and micro-PMUs in lower-voltage distribution systems. Each one collects local voltage, current and frequency information, indicating the state of the electricity grid in that place at that moment.
“In the U.S., these PMUs typically produce phasor measurements at speeds of 30 samples per second,” Pal says. “But devices that are capable of producing time-synchronized measurements at even higher speeds are being developed. These continuous point-on-wave, or POW, measurements present a significant advancement in grid monitoring and control applications.”
However, the fundamental concerns of limited device coverage and heavy real-time computational burdens still remain. So Pal and his team are making breakthroughs in robust statistics and machine learning to address these issues.
Pal says his research operates at the intersection of theory and application in the power systems domain. And in order to solve a problem related to a particular system application, he often needs to apply theory from a different domain, such as signal processing.
“It’s during these occasions that the interdisciplinary research happening at ASU becomes invaluable,” he says. “Additionally, I’m thankful to the Fulton Schools for help in setting up my laboratory and for the provision of startup funds, both of which have been instrumental in ensuring that this crucial research stays on track.”
Pal believes the National Science Foundation invested in his work because the fundamental concepts being explored have applications beyond the electricity grid.
“For instance, the new mathematical techniques created in this project can ensure accurate and fast estimation in the presence of data and model uncertainties in the fields of transportation and manufacturing,” he says.
Pal will also apply this research to complement the work of the Engineering Education Outreach team at the Fulton Schools. Together, they will create intellectually stimulating yet fun problem-solving projects intended to motivate high school students to pursue a career in STEM.
While encouraging future engineers, Pal says that we all build on the efforts of the professionals who preceded us. So he is particularly grateful for the foundational support he received from his doctoral adviser, the late James Thorp, as well as Arun Phadke, who also served on Pal’s doctoral committee at Virginia Tech. Thorp and Phadke invented time-synchronized measurements in power systems and shared the prestigious Benjamin Franklin Medal in Electrical Engineering from The Franklin Institute in 2008.
Science writer, Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering
480-727-5622 gary.werner@asu.edu
An Arizona State University student has won the nation’s most prestigious award for undergraduates who are pursuing careers in public service – though he’s been involved in local government for two years already.Armando Montero, who is pursuing three degrees — political science, economics and math — was elected as the youngest-ever member of the Tempe Union High School District governing...
An Arizona State University student has won the nation’s most prestigious award for undergraduates who are pursuing careers in public service – though he’s been involved in local government for two years already.
Armando Montero, who is pursuing three degrees — political science, economics and math — was elected as the youngest-ever member of the Tempe Union High School District governing board in 2020. Now he's the winner of a Truman Scholarship.
Montero, who is in Barrett, The Honors College and will graduate from ASU in 2023, plans to use the prize money to attend the Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law and then work for an education nonprofit.
“One of the main reasons I’m going to law school is to continue working in local politics, which I’ve done since I was a sophomore in high school,” he said.
“I still want to serve on the school board and continue working in the community I grew up in.”
Since the beginning of the Truman Scholar program in 1977, ASU has produced 22 Truman Scholars. The most recent winners are Alexa Scholl in 2018 and Frank Smith in 2015, according to Kyle Mox, associate dean for national scholarship advisement at ASU.
“I cannot emphasize enough what a remarkable achievement this is,” Mox said.
“Given the incredible level of accomplishment among the applicant pool, the Truman Scholarship is among the most difficult national scholarships to win.”
Each university is limited to four nominees, and ASU typically gets 10 to 12 strong applications for those four spots, he said. Students who want the award must show that they already have a deep commitment to service.
When Montero was running for a seat on the school board, the Lorraine W. Frank Office of National Scholarships Advisement reached out to him to begin long-term planning, Mox said.
Montero found out he won the award during a surprise Zoom call on April 14 with ASU President Michael Crow and Provost Nancy Gonzales.
Montero, a graduate of Desert Vista High School in the Tempe Union district, answered some questions from ASU News:
Question: What was the Truman application process like?
Answer: It was a very lengthy process and very stressful. I started in August of last year. There are a bunch of essay questions related to issues we’re passionate about, why we’re interested in public service, our future goals, and then a policy proposal on an issue we identified.
My policy proposal was on mental health in public schools, which is one of the reasons I ran for school board in the first place. It focused on legislation that would require school districts to create specific mental health policies that would focus on prevention, intervention and finding different ways to incentivize the hiring of school counselors.
Q: What is it like being on the school board?
A: It’s definitely been a very challenging few years. It’s not easy to be on a school board currently because of our responsibilities during the pandemic, plus the very divided times right now.
What sticks out to me the most as someone who graduated from this district in 2019 is to go into classrooms now and have students see someone who looks like them and understands them, which is not something I had in high school. I’ve had to make some of the most difficult decisions I’ve ever had to make before.
Q: What are some of the difficult decisions you’ve faced?
A: Once I was elected, I realized how those decisions affect your life. We focus on presidential and state elections, but those don’t always have the direct impact that the school board decisions have. They’re up close and personal. So students should get involved with what’s happening on their school boards and raise their voices.
As we were going through the pandemic, there were a lot of really tough discussions around when we reopen our schools or have mask mandates. We faced a lot of disruptions daily. We took a deep look at our budget, as a lot of things we had in place weren’t there anymore, and we had to shift resources.
It was especially difficult because public education is a hot-button issue and we don’t have a lot of support from the state, so a lot of the time we were on our own. We knew the right decision but were told we couldn’t do it, and coming to terms with that is difficult.
One big accomplishment was last year when we passed the most comprehensive mental health policy in the state to date. It’s a very comprehensive plan to deal with intervention and social-emotional learning that outlines goals for schools.
Q: You also work as a policy analyst for ASU. What do you do?
A: I work in the Office of University Affairs with Max Goshert and a team. We take on a variety of policy analysis projects. Sometimes we work with Knowledge Enterprise and sometimes with Dr. Crow.
One of our ongoing tasks is analyzing budget requests from federal agencies and identifying opportunities for ASU, as well as analyzing federal higher education legislation. And also just whatever is of interest at the time. We give reports and briefs on the political landscape.
Q: You said you want to become a lawyer to improve the quality of education in Arizona. What are some specific issues you’re interested in?
A: There’s a lack of conversation, especially at the state Legislature, about school finance reform and equity in school finance and the way that money is distributed across the state. The disparities that exist in our own district are striking. Step one is obviously we need more funding in general, but there has to be a conversation about how we distribute the funding we’re getting.
Looking at our teachers is another hot-button issue this year. We’re seeing a massive shortage of teachers across the nation, but especially in Arizona. They’re not being treated like the professionals that they are. One of the things we do in our district is to make teachers feel appreciated, but that’s sometimes hard when they see what’s happening in the state Legislature. We have to give them proper compensation and the leeway they need for their own class and trust that they’re doing what they’re trained to do.
Q: What does your family think?
A: They’re very excited as well. They’ve been some of my biggest supporters in this process.
I came to them in 2019 and said I was running for school board and it was, "Are you crazy?" But they’ve been very supportive, especially when I’m rambling about things they probably don’t care about, they make sure to sit and listen and give advice and comfort.
Q: What do you want people to know about being a school board member?
A: What a lot of people don’t understand about being on a school board is that sometimes it’s very lonely. We have open meeting laws and can’t talk to more than one person at a time, so we’re faced with these decisions by ourselves. And there’s been a lot of vitriol around school board meetings.
We’re unpaid. It’s a difficult position to have, but having support helps us to stay in the position.
Top photo by Charlie Leight/ASU News
480-727-4503 marybeth.faller@asu.edu