Zhifang Wang, Ph.D.

Associate Professor, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering VCU College of Engineering

  • Engineering West Hall, Room 208, Richmond VA

Dr. Zhifang Wang specializes in electric power grid vulnerability analysis, synthetic grid modeling, and renewable integration.

Contact

VCU College of Engineering

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Biography

Zhifang Wang, Ph.D., joined the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering faculty in August 2012. Dr. Wang is coming to VCU from the University of California, Davis. She received both the B.S. and M.S. degrees in Electrical Engineering from Tsinghua University, Beijing, China, and the Ph.D. degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Cornell University. She is a Senior Member of the IEEE, a member of IEEE Power & Energy Society, IEEE Communication Society, and IEEE Women in Engineering. Her current research focuses on cascading failures in power grids, energy system modeling and optimization, integration of renewable generation into power markets, and voltage stability and controls.

Industry Expertise

Education/Learning
Research
Electrical Engineering

Areas of Expertise

Cascading Failures in Power Grids
Energy System Modeling and Optimization
Integration of Renewable Generation
Voltage Stability and Controls
Smart Grid Communication Architecture

Accomplishments

HICSS'48 Best Paper Award 2015

2017-05-23

For the paper entitled "On Bus Type Assignments in Random Topology Power Grid Models", coauthored with Dr. Robert J. Thomas.

IEEE Donald G. Fink Award 2013

2013-02-20

For the paper entitled "For the Grid and Through the Grid: the Role of Power Line Communications in the Smart Grid," coauthored by Dr. Stefano Galli and Dr. Anna Scaglione.

IEEE Senior Member

2012-02-18

In recognition of professional standing. Awarded by the Officers and Board of Directors of the IEEE.

Education

Cornell University

Ph.D.

Electrical and Computer Engineering

2005

Tsinghua University, Beijing,

M.S.

Electrical Engineering

1998

Tsinghua University, Beijing,

B.S.

Electrical Engineering

1995

Affiliations

  • Assistant Professor, Electrical and Computer Engineering, VCU
  • Director, EPES Lab, Electrical and Computer Engineering, VCU

Research Grants

Synthetic Data For Power Grid R&D, June 2016 - June 2018

DoE ARPA-e

2016-06-30

The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, with partners from Cornell University, Virginia Commonwealth University, and Arizona State University will develop 10 open-source and synthetic transmission system models and associated scenarios that match the complexity of power grids. By utilizing statistics derived from real data, the team’s models will have coordinates based on North American geography with network structure, characteristics, and consumer demand that mimics real grid profiles. Much of the developed software will be open source and available on the MATPOWER software suite as well as the GRID DATA repository.

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Courses

EGRE 471 Power System Analysis

Offered in spring semester. The course provides students with a comprehensive overview of electrical power system operation and design. It will develop models and tools for investigating system behavior, and provide opportunities for using the tools in design process.

EGRE 671 Power System Operation and Controls

This graduate level course covers the fundamental concepts of economic operation and controls of power systems, including real and reactive power balance, optimized generation dispatch, steady state an dynamic analysis, real-time monitoring and controls, and contingency analysis.

EGRE 573 Sustainable and Efficient Power Systems

The course covers distributed power generation system and renewable energy technologies. It develops models and tools for investigating electric power generation and efficiency analysis, the wind and solar power, energy storage, renewable integration and environmental impacts.

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Selected Articles

Improved Synthetic Power Grid Modeling with Correlated Bus Type Assignments

IEEE Trans on Power Systems, Accepted for publication in Dec 2016, available in IEEE explorer.

*Seyyed H. Elyas, Zhifang Wang

This paper presents our study results on the correlated assignment of generation, load, or connection buses in a given grid topology and the development of an optimized search algorithm to improve the proposed synthetic grid model, called RT-nestedSmallWorld.

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Studying Cascading Overload Failures under High Penetration of Wind Generation

2017 IEEE PES General Meeting, Chicago, IL, USA, July 16-20, 2017. Accepted, to appear.

*M. H. Athari, Z. Wang

In this study, the impacts of wind generation in terms of its penetration and uncertainty levels on grid vulnerability to cascading overload failures are studied. The simulation results on IEEE 300 bus system show that uncertainty coming from wind energy have severe impact on grid vulnerability to cascading overload failures. Results also suggest that higher penetration levels of wind energy if not managed appropriately will add to this severity due to injection of higher uncertainties into the grid.

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A Multi-objective Optimization Algorithm for Bus Type Assignments in Random Topology Power Grid Model

HICSS'49, Kauaui, HI, USA, Jan 2016.

*S. H. Elyas, Z. Wang,

With the help of Bus Type Entropy, a novel measure which provides a quantitative means to better represent the correlation of bus type assignments in a grid topology, we propose a multi-objective optimization algorithm for the bus type assignments in the random topology power grid modeling. The proposed search algorithm is able to locate the best set of bus type assignments for a given random "electrical" topology generated by RT-nested-smallworld.

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