Electrical and Computer Engineering Commons^™

A Hydropower Facility As An Energy Water Signal Processor, Asha Shibu

Doctoral Dissertations

In recent times, various efforts have been made to address the challenge of adequately representing hydropower systems in modeling frameworks, accounting for the lack of data to represent the multiple constraints in hydropower operation. This research is a pilot data-driven methodology for characterizing, classifying, and comparing the water-to-energy and energy-to-water signal transformations that hydropower facilities as signal processors accomplish. In this study, a Box Jenkins transfer function/noise model is used to identify the relationship between reservoir inflows and outflows. For examining the feasibility of this methodology, 5-minute fleet data for five storage and five run-of-river facilities was provided by the …

Oscillation Analysis And Its Mitigation Using Inverter-Based Resources In Large-Scale Power Grids, Khaled Alshuaibi

Doctoral Dissertations

In today's interconnected power grids, forced oscillations and poorly damped low-frequency oscillations are major concerns that can damage equipment, limit power transfer capability, and deteriorate power system stability.

The first part of the dissertation focuses on the impact of a wide-area power oscillation damping (POD) controller via voltage source converter-based high voltage direct current (VSC-HVDC) in enhancing the power system stability and improving the damping of low-frequency oscillation. The POD controller's performance was investigated under a three-phase temporary line fault. The Great Britain (G.B.) power grid model validated the POD controller performance via active power modulation of VSC-HVDC through TSAT-RTDS …

Power System Transients: Impacts Of Non-Ideal Sensors On Measurement-Based Applications, Aaron Wilson

Doctoral Dissertations

The power system is comprised of thousands of lines, generation sources, transformers, and other equipment responsible for servicing millions of customers. Such a complex apparatus requires constant monitoring and protection schemes capable of keeping the system operational, reliable, and resilient. To achieve these goals, measurement is a critical role in the continued functionality of the power system. However, measurement devices are never completely reliable, and are susceptible to inherent irregularities; imparting potentially misleading distortions on measurements containing high-frequency components. This dissertation analyzes some of these effects, as well as the way they may impact certain applications in the grid that …

Depth Estimation Using 2d Rgb Images, Taher Naderi

Doctoral Dissertations

Single image depth estimation is an ill-posed problem. That is, it is not mathematically possible to uniquely estimate the 3rd dimension (or depth) from a single 2D image. Hence, additional constraints need to be incorporated in order to regulate the solution space. As a result, in the first part of this dissertation, the idea of constraining the model for more accurate depth estimation by taking advantage of the similarity between the RGB image and the corresponding depth map at the geometric edges of the 3D scene is explored. Although deep learning based methods are very successful in computer vision and …

Decentralized Resource Allocation Through Constrained Centroidal Voronoi Tessellations, Bhagyashri Telsang

Doctoral Dissertations

The advancements in the fields of microelectronics facilitate incorporating team elements like coordination into engineering systems through advanced computing power. Such incorporation is useful since many engineering systems can be characterized as a collection of interacting subsystems each having access to local information, making local decisions, interacting with neighbors, and seeking to optimize local objectives that may well conflict with other subsystems, while also trying to optimize certain global objective. In this dissertation, we take advantage of such technological advancements to explore the problem of resource allocation through different aspects of the decentralized architecture like information structure in a team. …

Application Of Load Shifting For Commercial Hvac-R Systems Via Static And Dynamic Event Automated Demand Response, Justin Anthony Martinez

Masters Theses

Life in the modern era is inextricably tied to energy and the unending, ever-growing need for more. The technologies that drive society, in fields such as communication, infrastructure, and heavy industry, are dependent on that electrical energy being reliable and readily available. This places an extreme importance on the power generation sector as a function of meeting the demand required for stability. However, as seen with increased climate volatility due to misused or otherwise mismanaged resources in the heavy industry, and the uncertain and variable renewable energy generation; there must also be ecological as well as economic consideration when discussing …

Electric Vehicle Aggregation Considering Fast-Charging For Power System Applications, Trey I. Mingee

Masters Theses

The electric grid has become one of the most important pieces of technology for modern society, providing power to homes and businesses at all hours of the day. Future increases of worldwide electricity demand along with growing threats of contingency scenarios such as cyberattacks cause great concerns regarding the reliability of the grid. Further, the gradual shift from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources creates a significant need for grid support services to aid in its operation. Electric vehicles will become more prevalent in coming decades; these modules present unique loads to the system that are prime candidates for use …

Remote Human Vital Sign Monitoring Using Multiple-Input Multiple-Output Radar At Millimeter-Wave Frequencies, Toan Khanh Vo Dai

Doctoral Dissertations

Non-contact respiration rate (RR) and heart rate (HR) monitoring using millimeter-wave (mmWave) radars has gained lots of attention for medical, civilian, and military applications. These mmWave radars are small, light, and portable which can be deployed to various places. To increase the accuracy of RR and HR detection, distributed multi-input multi-output (MIMO) radar can be used to acquire non-redundant information of vital sign signals from different perspectives because each MIMO channel has different fields of view with respect to the subject under test (SUT). This dissertation investigates the use of a Frequency Modulated Continuous Wave (FMCW) radar operating at 77-81 …

Analysis And Development Of Multiple Phase Shift Modulation In A Sic-Based Dual Active Bridge Converter, Yu Yan

Doctoral Dissertations

Renewable energy adoption is a popular topic to release the stress of climate change caused by greenhouse gas. Electricity is ideal secondary energy for clean primary energy such as nuclear, wind, photovoltaic, and so on. To extend the application of electricity and reduce fossil energy consumption by transportation sectors, electric vehicles (EVs) become promising technology that can further inspire the development of renewable energy.

Battery as the core in an EV provides the energy to the motor and all on-board electric equipment. The battery charger is mainly composed of a power factor correction (PFC) and isolated DC-DC converter. Therefore, power …

A Rapid And Ultra-Sensitive Biosensing Platform Based On Tunable Dielectrophoresis For Robust Poc Applications, Yu Jiang

Doctoral Dissertations

With the ongoing pandemic, there have been increasing concerns recently regarding major public health issues such as abuse of organophosphorus compounds, pathogenic bacterial infections, and biosecurity in agricultural production. Biosensors have long been considered a kernel technology for next-generation diagnostic solutions to improve food safety and public health. Significant amounts of effort have been devoted to inventing novel sensing mechanisms, modifying their designs, improving their performance, and extending their application scopes. However, the reliability and selectivity of most biosensors still have much to be desired, which holds back the development and commercialization of biosensors, especially for on-site and point-of-care (POC) …

Power Quality Control And Common-Mode Noise Mitigation For Inverters In Electric Vehicles, Yang Huang

Doctoral Dissertations

Inverters are widely utilized in electric vehicle (EV) applications as a major voltage/current source for onboard battery chargers (OBC) and motor drive systems. The inverter performance is critical to the efficiency of EV system energy conversion and electronics system electro-magnetic interference (EMI) design. However, for AC systems, the bandwidth requirement is usually low compared with DC systems, and the control impact on the inverter differential-mode (DM) and common-mode (CM) performance are not well investigated. With the wide-band gap (WBG) device era, the switching capability of power electronics devices drastically improved. The DM/CM impact that was brought by the WBG device-based …

Stability Analysis And Design Of Grid-Interactive Power Electronic Converters, Le Kong

Doctoral Dissertations

The increasing penetration of power electronic converters (PECs) can provide high flexibility, full controllability, sustainability, and improved efficiency for future electric power systems. However, it also introduces new challenges since the wide-frequency-band control dynamics of PECs can interact with the power system and result in different types of instability issues. To holistically address the instability issues, several research activities are conducted in this dissertation.

The modular multilevel converter (MMC), which is one of the most common PECs in high- or medium-voltage power systems, is investigated. An improved MMC dc impedance model is developed by considering both the submodule voltage and …

Power Market Cybersecurity And Profit-Targeting Cyberattacks, Qiwei Zhang

Doctoral Dissertations

The COVID-19 pandemic has forced many companies and business to operate through remote platforms, which has made everyday life and everyone more digitally connected than ever before. The cybersecurity has become a bigger priority in all aspects of life. A few real-world cases have demonstrated the current capability of cyberattacks as in [1], [2], and [3]. These cases invalidate the traditional belief that cyberattacks are unable to penetrate real-world industrial systems. Beyond the physical damage, some attackers target financial arbitrage advantages brought by false data injection attacks (FDIAs) [4]. Malicious breaches into power market operations could induce catastrophic consequences on …

Efficient Control Approaches For Guaranteed Frequency Performance In Power Systems, Samaneh Morovati

Doctoral Dissertations

Due to high penetration of renewable energy, converter-interfaced sources are increasing in power systems and degrading the grid frequency response. Synthetic inertia emulation and guaranteed primary frequency response is a challenging task. Still, there is high potential for application of highly controllable converter-interfaced devices to help performance. Renewable energy sources and demand side smart devices also need to be equipped with innovative frequency control approaches that contribute to frequency regulation operations.

First, the wind turbine generator is chosen to represent an example of a converter- interfaced source. An augmented system frequency response model is derived, including the system frequency response …

Carbon Footprint And Cost Minimization For Grid Systems Through Day-Ahead Order And Battery Size Optimization, Omid Pourkhalili

Doctoral Dissertations

We modeled the problem of peak hours day-ahead order for smart grid companies integrating renewable energy and power storage systems. This results in optimizing day-ahead order, battery storage size, and consequently lowering the use of fossil fuels and emissions. The utility-scale power storage can balance the difference between the day-ahead forecasts and real-time consumer demand through energy arbitrage and transmission deferral for peaking capacity. We define system parameters and their associated costs and run a suggested algorithm to minimize the grid operating cost by optimizing day-ahead order amount and battery storage capacity. The model is designed to prioritize and take …

Brain Inspired Organic Electronic Devices And Systems For Adaptive Signal Processing, Memory, And Learning., Subhadeep Koner

Doctoral Dissertations

A new class of electronic device has emerged which bear the potential for low powered brain like adaptive signal processing, memory, and learning. It is a non-linear resistor with memory coined as memristor. A memristor is a two-terminal electrical device which simultaneously changes its resistance (processing information) and store the resistance state pertaining to the applied power (memory). Therefore, it can collocate memory and processing much like our brain synapse which can save time and energy for information processing. Leveraging stored memory, it can thereby help future engineered systems to learn autonomously from past experiences. There has been a growing …

A Bulk Driven Transimpedance Cmos Amplifier For Sipm Based Detection, Shahram Hatefi Hesari

Masters Theses

The contribution of this work lies in the development of a bulk driven operational
transconducctance amplifier which can be integrated with other analog circuits and
photodetectors in the same chip for compactness, miniaturization and reducing the
power. Silicon photomultipliers, also known as SiPMs, when coupled with scintillator materials are used in many imaging applications including nuclear detection. This thesis discuss the design of a bulk-driven transimpedance amplifier suitable for detectors where the front end is a SiPM. The amplifier was design and fabricated in a standard standard CMOS process and is suitable for integration with CMOS based SiPMs and commercially …

Load Modeling And Evaluation Of Leds For Hardware Test Bed Application, Jillian M. Ruff

Masters Theses

The lighting industry was revolutionized with the emergence of LED lighting. Over the last 15 years, LED lighting device sales and utilization have grown immensely. The growth and popularity of LEDs is due to improved operation of the device when compared to previous lighting technologies. Efficient performance of the device is critical due to the growth of global energy consumption.

As nonrenewable generation fuel is finite, utilities have begun the transition to renewable energy generation. Generation and distribution systems become inherently complex to comprehend and maintain with incorporation of emerging supply and load technologies. With the unprecedented growth of LED …

Impacts Of Summer Drought And Climate Change Conditions On Hydropower Resources And Power System Reliability In The Pjm Region, William J. Tingen Ii

Masters Theses

The United States power grid is a large, complex, and interconnected system that involves the coordination of numerous entities (e.g., power plant owners/operators, regulators, stakeholders, etc.). As such, any type of extreme event can potentially threaten the economic, safe, and reliable operation of the grid. One such example is summer drought (i.e., events predominantly characterized by elevated temperatures and reduced precipitation), which have impacts spanning all aspects of the power system, especially generation resources through changes in water availability and temperature. Additionally, although heavily dependent on region, climate change can potentially increase the likelihood and severity of drought conditions, illustrating …

Cmos Compatible Carbonization Of Polymer For Elctrochemical Sensors, Mohammad Aminul Haque

Doctoral Dissertations

Carbon-based electrodes that are integrable with CMOS readout electrodes possess great potential in a wide range of cutting-edge applications. The primary scientific contribution is the development of a processing sequence which can be implemented on CMOS chips to fabricate pyrolyzed carbon microelectrodes from 3D printed polymer microstructures to develop lab-on-CMOS monolithic electrochemical sensor systems. Specifically, optimized processing conditions to convert 3D printed polymer micro- and nano-structures to carbonized electrodes have been explored in order to obtain sensing electrodes for lab-on- CMOS electrochemical systems. Processing conditions have been identified, including a sequel of oxidative and inert atmosphere anneals to form pyrolyzed …

Optimization Methods For Day Ahead Unit Commitment, Jonathan David Schrock

Doctoral Dissertations

This work examines a variety of optimization techniques to better solve the day ahead unit commitment problem. The first method looks at the impact of almost identical generators on the problem and how to exploit that fact for computational gain. The second work seeks to improve the fidelity of the problem by better modeling the impact of pumped storage hydropower. Lastly, the relationship between the length of the planning horizon and the quality of the solutions is investigated.

Systematic Design Of A 100 W 6.78 Mhz Wireless Charging Station Covering Multiple Devices And A Large Charging Area, Jie Li

Doctoral Dissertations

Wireless power transfer (WPT) promises to offer safe and convenient charging in consumer electronics applications. The application ranges from sub-watt medical implant device charging to watt-level household charging, further to the kilowatt electric vehicle (EV) and railway charging. At present, two industry standards are widely used to guide the WPT product design. The Qi standard describes an application that requires the receiver to be placed close to the transmitter, called "tightly coupled" WPT. The receiver coil typically has a similar size compared to the transmitter. And the operation frequency is in the kHz range. The Airfuel standard, on the other …

A Ringamp-Assisted, Output Capacitor-Less Analog Cmos Low-Dropout Voltage Regulator, Jordan Sangid

Doctoral Dissertations

Continued advancements in state-of-the-art integrated circuits have furthered trends toward higher computational performance and increased functionality within smaller circuit area footprints, all while improving power efficiencies to meet the demands of mobile and battery-powered applications. A significant portion of these advancements have been enabled by continued scaling of CMOS technology into smaller process node sizes, facilitating faster digital systems and power optimized computation. However, this scaling has degraded classic analog amplifying circuit structures with reduced voltage headroom and lower device output resistance; and thus, lower available intrinsic gain. This work investigates these trends and their impact for fine-grain Low-Dropout (LDO) …

Environmental Design And Optimization Of Modular Hydropower Plants, Colin Sasthav

Doctoral Dissertations

This research aimed to understand the pathways to cost-effective and sustainable low-head hydropower. Designing viable hydropower projects requires optimization across many economic, environmental, and social outcomes. However, existing run-of-river hydropower design models often focus on economic performance and customizing technologies for high-head diversion schemes. Standard modular hydropower is a new design approach that uses standardized rather than custom-designed technologies to achieve economies of scale. Oak Ridge National Laboratory established a conceptual outline for module classes based on functions, such as generation modules and fish passage modules, but further research was needed to identify how modules should be selected and operated …

Efficient Deep Learning And Its Applications, Zi Wang

Doctoral Dissertations

Deep neural networks (DNNs) have achieved huge successes in various tasks such as object classification and detection, image synthesis, game-playing, and biological developmental system simulation. State-or-the-art performance on these tasks is usually achieved by designing deeper and wider DNNs with the cost of huge storage size and high computational complexity. However, the over-parameterization problem of DNNs constrains their deployment in resource-limited devices, such as drones and mobile phones.

With these concerns, many network compression approaches are developed, such as quantization, neural architecture search, network pruning, and knowledge distillation. These approaches reduce the sizes and computational costs of DNNs while maintaining …

Data Center Power System Emulation And Gan-Based High-Efficiency Rectifier With Reactive Power Regulation, Jingjing Sun

Doctoral Dissertations

Data centers are indispensable for today's computing and networking society, which has a considerable power consumption and significant impact on power system. Meanwhile, the average energy usage efficiency of data centers is still not high, leading to significant power loss and system cost.

In this dissertation, effective methods are proposed to investigate the data center load characteristics, improve data center power usage efficiency, and reduce the system cost.

First, a dynamic power model of a typical data center ac power system is proposed, which is complete and able to predict the data center's dynamic performance. Also, a converter-based data center …

Power System Simulation Using A Differential Transformation Method, Yang Liu

Doctoral Dissertations

This work proposes a novel approach for efficient and robust power system simulation based on differential transformation (DT).

First, this work introduces the DT to study power systems as high-dimensional nonlinear dynamical systems for the first time. This work designs a DT-based high-order semi-analytical simulation scheme that allows significantly prolonged time steps to reduce simulation time compared to a traditional numerical approach. The numerical stability, accuracy, and time performance of the proposed approach are compared with widely used numerical methods on the IEEE 39-bus system and Polish 2383-bus system.

Second, this work proposes a novel non-iterative method to solve power …

Improving The Biocompatibility Of The Bio-Inorganic Interface For Enhanced Photosystem I-Based Biophotovoltaic Device Performance, Alexandra H. Teodor

Doctoral Dissertations

The world’s energy demands are projected to increase by nearly 50% by the year 2040, and consumption of carbon-based fuels continues to release greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and methane into the atmosphere. This has been causally linked with climate change and increased extreme weather events, which has been further linked to adverse health outcomes and negative effects on biodiversity, food security, and increased disease transmission. Clearly, there is a need for a sustainable, carbon-free, and cost-effective method of energy production to meet growing energy production demands. The sun irradiates Earth’s surface annually with ~80,000 terawatts (TW), making solar …

A High Frequency Wireless Power Transfer System For Electric Vehicle Charging Using Multi-Layer Non-Uniform Self-Resonant Coil, Ruiyang Qin

Doctoral Dissertations

Wireless EV (Electric Vehicle) charging is an emerging technology with rapid development in the past decade. Compared to wired EV chargers, wireless power transfer (WPT) enables safe and unobtrusive charging for EVs.

This work proposes high frequency wireless charging using a self-resonant (SR) coil at several megahertz. A multi-layer self-resonant coil structure is proposed, allowing high quality factor coils to be fabricated from layers of inexpensive copper foil and dielectric film. Additionally, the self-resonant coil utilizes its interlayer capacitance for resonance, eliminating the external compensation capacitor and shrinking the overall volume of passive component to increase the power density. Comparing …

Development Of Arduino-Based Portable Systems For Electroanalytical Detection, Jiamei Huang

Masters Theses

This work presents the development of a multi-mode electroanalytical detection system based on Arduino microcontroller board. First, a multichannel impedance readout system is designed for alternating current electrokinetics (ACEK) based capacitive sensing. ACEK phenomena on 100μm interdigitated electrodes are observed via fluorescent particles as well as bioparticles, which illustrate the mechanisms of ACEK target enrichment for the capacitive sensing method. I2C multiplexer is applied to allow multiple impedance converters to work together providing continuous AC signals for ACEK capacitive sensing. Second, an electronic nose composed of three modules including a gas sensor array, a circuit for signal acquisition integrated with …