Research
The Perfect Power project includes three areas of research funded by $3.5 million of the total $12 million investment by IIT and the DOE.Distribution Automation
Electrical and Computer Engineering Professor Alexander J. Flueck is leading the Advanced Distribution Automation and Recovery research and development task. Flueck's team is developing an advanced system for sensing distribution grid conditions and automatically optimizing the grid's response. The planned R&D will accelerate the deployment of new technologies for autonomous agent-based distribution automation for monitoring and controlling the integrated management of networks and services. The architecture will provide transaction capabilities that control electric energy delivery, including fault detection, location and isolation; feeder reconfiguration; volt/VAR management; service restoration; emergency response; and integration of distributed resources.
Cable Fault Detection and Mitigation
Electrical and Computer Engineering Professor Zuyi Li is leading the research on Buried Cable Fault Detection and Mitigation. Li is working to develop and demonstrate an intelligent fault detection and mitigation system that can quickly detect and discriminate cable faults. This work is based on Li’s previous research on intelligent power system protection. His research, development, and demonstration will reduce the fault impact on the distribution network, prevent unnecessary circuit breaker trips, decrease the time spent by maintenance crews to locate faults, and reduce the number of standby crews.
ZigBee Wireless Sensor Network
Electrical and Computer Engineering Professor Chi Zhou is leading the wireless sensor network research. Zhou is working to design and develop interference avoidance techniques, self-forming and self-healing cluster-tree ZigBee systems, and MAC Layer protocol to achieve energy-efficient access for the cluster-tree networks. Using her research, ZigBee sensors will be used to run energy efficiency programs such as turning appliances and processes on and off at scheduled times. To do this, Zhou is also developing a plan to install ZigBee routers and designing energy-efficient routing algorithms for communications among cluster heads and routers.