A Pioneering Roadmap for ML-Driven Algorithmic Advancements in Electrical Networks

To advance control, operation and planning tools of electrical networks with ML is not straightforward. 110 experts were surveyed showing where and how ML algorithmis could advance. This paper assesses this survey and research environment. Then it develops an innovation roadmap that helps align our research community towards a goal-oriented realisation of the opportunities that AI upholds. This paper finds that the R\&D environment of system operators (and the surrounding research ecosystem) needs adaptation to enable faster developments with AI while maintaining high testing quality and safety. This roadmap may interest research centre managers in system operators, academics, and labs dedicated to advancing the next generation of tooling for electrical networks.

End-to-End Learning with Multiple Modalities for System-Optimised Renewables Nowcasting

With the increasing penetration of renewable power sources such as wind and solar, accurate short-term, nowcasting renewable power prediction is becoming increasingly important. This paper investigates the multi-modal (MM) learning and end-to-end (E2E) learning for nowcasting renewable power as an intermediate to energy management systems. MM combines features from all-sky imagery and meteorological sensor data as two modalities to predict renewable power generation that otherwise could not be combined effectively. The combined, predicted values are then input to a differentiable optimal power flow (OPF) formulation simulating the energy management. For the first time, MM is combined with E2E training of the model that minimises the expected total system cost. The case study tests the proposed methodology on the real sky and meteorological data from the Netherlands. In our study, the proposed MM-E2E model reduced system cost by 30% compared to uni-modal baselines.

Deep Statistical Solver for Distribution System State Estimation

Implementing accurate Distribution System State Estimation (DSSE) faces several challenges, among which the lack of observability and the high density of the distribution system. While data-driven alternatives based on Machine Learning models could be a choice, they suffer in DSSE because of the lack of labeled data. In fact, measurements in the distribution system are often noisy, corrupted, and unavailable. To address these issues, we propose the Deep Statistical Solver for Distribution System State Estimation (DSS$^2$), a deep learning model based on graph neural networks (GNNs) that accounts for the network structure of the distribution system and for the physical governing power flow equations. DSS$^2$ leverages hypergraphs to represent the heterogeneous components of the distribution systems and updates their latent representations via a node-centric message-passing scheme. A weakly supervised learning approach is put forth to train the DSS$^2$ in a learning-to-optimize fashion w.r.t. the Weighted Least Squares loss with noisy measurements and pseudomeasurements. By enforcing the GNN output into the power flow equations and the latter into the loss function, we force the DSS$^2$ to respect the physics of the distribution system. This strategy enables learning from noisy measurements, acting as an implicit denoiser, and alleviating the need for ideal labeled data. Extensive experiments with case studies on the IEEE 14-bus, 70-bus, and 179-bus networks showed the DSS$^2$ outperforms by a margin the conventional Weighted Least Squares algorithm in accuracy, convergence, and computational time, while being more robust to noisy, erroneous, and missing measurements. The DSS$^2$ achieves a competing, yet lower, performance compared with the supervised models that rely on the unrealistic assumption of having all the true labels.

Learning to run a power network with trust

Artificial agents are promising for realtime power system operations, particularly, to compute remedial actions for congestion management. Currently, these agents are limited to only autonomously run by themselves. However, autonomous agents will not be deployed any time soon. Operators will still be in charge of taking action in the future. Aiming at designing an assistant for operators, we here consider humans in the loop and propose an original formulation for this problem. We first advance an agent with the ability to send to the operator alarms ahead of time when the proposed actions are of low confidence. We further model the operator's available attention as a budget that decreases when alarms are sent. We present the design and results of our competition "Learning to run a power network with trust" in which we benchmark the ability of submitted agents to send relevant alarms while operating the network to their best.

Sample-Derived Disjunctive Rules for Secure Power System Operation

Machine learning techniques have been used in the past using Monte Carlo samples to construct predictors of the dynamic stability of power systems. In this paper we move beyond the task of prediction and propose a comprehensive approach to use predictors, such as Decision Trees (DT), within a standard optimization framework for pre- and post-fault control purposes. In particular, we present a generalizable method for embedding rules derived from DTs in an operation decision-making model. We begin by pointing out the specific challenges entailed when moving from a prediction to a control framework. We proceed with introducing the solution strategy based on generalized disjunctive programming (GDP) as well as a two-step search method for identifying optimal hyper-parameters for balancing cost and control accuracy. We showcase how the proposed approach constructs security proxies that cover multiple contingencies while facing high-dimensional uncertainty with respect to operating conditions with the use of a case study on the IEEE 39-bus system. The method is shown to achieve efficient system control at a marginal increase in system price compared to an oracle model.