Associate Professor Melike Erol-Kantarci
School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science,
University of Ottawa, Canada
AI-enabled Energy Trading for Microgrids and Transactive Energy Systems
Abstract: Renewable energy resources are underutilized worldwide, regardless of geography or economy. This is partly due to the challenge of integrating a large number of small-scale, distributed renewable energy generators to the utility power grid; and partly due to the intermittency and cost of such resources. The current practice for installing small generators is to invest for capacity that only meets the average demand of the consumers with rigid contracts, simply because in general, there is no stake in surplus energy from prosumers. In this talk, we introduce novel AI-based tools that will allow a P2P energy trading platform consisting of microgrids to become a part of the future transactive energy systems. Energy trading among microgrid communities promises to make use of the renewable energy more efficiently and strengthen the resilience of the power grid during disasters and attacks. Despite the advantages of a P2P energy trading platform, there are several challenges that need to be addressed. First, reliable and low-latency communication among the peers is necessary to allow real-time negotiation of trading decisions. Second, uncertainties that result from generation, demand or participant behavior need to be addressed. In this talk, we will introduce our recent results on low-latency communications in microgrids that use reinforcement learning. In addition, we will introduce our Bayesian learning based techniques that address uncertainty and improve the microgrid coalitions that are formed to trade energy.
Bio: Melike Erol-Kantarci is Tier 2 Canada Research Chair in AI-enabled Next-Generation Wireless Networks and associate professor at the School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the University of Ottawa. She is the founding director of the Networked Systems and Communications Research (NETCORE) laboratory. She has over 130 peer-reviewed publications which have been cited over 5000 times and she has an h-index of 36. Recently, she was selected for the 2019 list of “N2Women: Stars in Computer Networking and Communications” along with 8 other distinguished scientists. She has received the IEEE Communication Society Best Tutorial Paper Award and the Best Editor Award of the IEEE Multimedia Communications Technical Committee in 2017. She is the co-editor of three books on smart grids and smart cities. She has delivered 40+ tutorials and invited talks around the globe. She has acted as the general chair or technical program chair for many international conferences and workshops. She is a senior member of the IEEE. Her main research interests are AI-enabled wireless networks, 5G and 6G wireless communications, smart grid, cyber-physical systems, electric vehicles, Internet of things and wireless sensor networks.