Pricing and Load Management in Energy Flow Networks

I have been working on this broad topic since 2013. This research adapts and applies many of the distributed optimization and game-theoretic techniques developed for packet flow optimization in communication networks to energy flow networks in smart grid and grid-interactive buildings. My key research papers on this topic are listed below, divided into three sub-topics:

      Demand-Response Pricing and Load Management in the Smart Grid

  1. A. Ghavami, S. Bhattacharya, K. Kar and A. Gupta, Price-Driven Charging of Plug-In Electric Vehicles: Nash Equilibrium, Social Optimality and Best-Response Convergence, Proceedings of CISS 2013 (47th Annual Conf. Information Sciences and Systems), Baltimore, MD, March 2013.
  2. A. Ghavami and K. Kar, Nonlinear Pricing for Social Optimality of PEV Charging under Uncertain User Preferences, Proceedings of CISS 2014 (48th Annual Conf. Information Sciences and Systems), Princeton, NJ, March 2014.
  3. Z. Dar, K. Kar, J.H. Chow, Store or Sell? A Threshold Price Policy for Revenue Maximization in Windfarms with On-site Storage, Proceedings of 2016 Annual Conference on Information Science and Systems (CISS), Princeton, NJ, March 2016.
  4. S. Bhattacharya, K. Kar, J. H. Chow and A. Gupta, Extended Second Price Auctions with Elastic Supply for PEV Charging in the Smart Grid, IEEE Transactions on Smart Grid. Volume 7, Issue 4, July 2016, Pages 2082-2093. (Parts of this work have appeared in ACC 2014 and NetGCoop 2014.)
  5. A. Ghavami, K. Kar and A. Gupta, Decentralized Charging of Plug-In Electric Vehicles with Distribution Feeder Overload Control, IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control, Volume 61, Issue 11, November 2016, Pages 3527-3532 (Extended version)
  6. Z. Dar, K. Kar, O. Sahni, J.H. Chow, Windfarm Power Optimization using Yaw Angle Control, IEEE Transactions on Sustainable Energy, Volume 8, Issue 1, January 2017, Pages 104-116.
  7. Z. Dar, K. Kar, J.H. Chow, Distributed Frequency Regulation in Smart Grids, Proceedings of 2017 North American Power Symposium, Morgantown, WV, September 2017.
  8. E. Anshelevich, K. Kar, S. Sekar, Z. B. Tariq, Balancing Social Utility with Aggegator Profit in Electric Vehicle Charging, Proceedings of 2017 IEEE International Conference on Smart Grid Communications (SmartGridComm), Dresden, Germany, October 2017.

      Flow Control for Fairness in Thermal Grids

  1. S. Bhattacharya, V. Chandan, V. Arya, K. Kar, Thermally-fair Demand Response for District Heating and Cooling (DHC) Networks, Proceedings of ACM e-Energy 2016, Waterloo, Canada, June 2016. (Extended version of this work appeared in IEEE Transactions of Sustainable Energy in 2019.)
  2. S. Bhattacharya, V. Chandan, V. Arya, K. Kar, Fairness based Demand Response in DHC Networks using Real Time Parameter Identification, Proc. IEEE SmartGridComm 2016 (Workshop on Efficient, Intelligent and Economic District Heating and Cooling Systems), Sydney, Australia, Nov. 2016.
  3. S. Bhattacharya, V. Chandan, V. Arya, K. Kar, DReAM: Demand Response Architecture for Multi-level District Heating and Cooling Networks, Proceedings of ACM e-Energy 2017, Hong Kong, China, May 2017.

      Thermostatic Load Control in Multizone Grid-Interactive Buildings

  1. S. Gupta, K. Kar, S. Mishra and J. T. Wen, Singular Perturbation Method For Smart Building Temperature Control Using Occupant Feedback, Asian Journal of Control, Vol. 20, No. 1, pp. 386-402, May 2018. (A shorter version appeared in Proceedings of 19th IFAC World Congress, Cape Town, South Africa, August 2014.)
  2. S. Gupta, K. Kar, S. Mishra and J. T. Wen, Distributed Consensus Algorithms for Collaborative Temperature Control in Smart Buildings, IEEE Transactions on Automation Science and Engineering, vol.12, no.4, pp.1285-1296, Oct. 2015. (A shorter version appeared in American Control Conference (ACC) 2015.) (Winner of the 2016 IEEE T-ASE Best Paper Award )
  3. S. K. Gupta, S. Atkinson, I. O'Boyle, J. Drogo, K. Kar, S. Mishra, J. T. Wen, BEES: Real-Time Occupant Feedback and Environmental Learning Framework For Collaborative Thermal Management in Multi-Zone, Multi-Occupant Buildings, Energy and Buildings, Volume 125, August 2016, Pages 142-152.
  4. S. K. Gupta and K. Kar, Human-in-the-loop Thermal Management for Smart Buildings, Book chapter in Intelligent Building Control Systems, J.T. Wen and S. Mishra (eds.).
  5. S. Bhattacharya, K. Kar and J. H. Chow, Optimal Precooling of Thermostatic Loads under Time-varying Electricity Prices, American Control Conference (ACC) 2017, Seattle, WA, May 2017. (A full version of this work appeared in IEEE Transactions on Sustainable Energy in 2019 as Economic Operation of Thermostatic Loads Under Time Varying Prices: An Optimal Control Approach.)
  6. Z. B. Tariq, K. Kar, S. Mishra, J.T. Wen, Enabling Better Thermal Management of Indoor Spaces through Adaptive Zonal Heat Transfer, American Control Conference (ACC) 2018, Milwaukee, WI, June 2018.
  7. S. Naqvi, K. Kar, S. Bhattacharya, V. Chandan, Peak Power Minimization for Commercial Thermostatically Controlled Loads in Multi-Unit Grid-Interactive Efficient Buildings, IEEE Transactions on Sustainable Energy, vol. 13, no. 2, pp. 998-1010, April 2022. (Extended version of the ISGT 2021 paper.)
  8. S. Naqvi et al., Data-Driven Co-optimization of Energy Efficiency and Indoor Environmental Quality in Commercial Buildings, Proc. e-Energy 2023 (Paper in AMLIES Workshop), Orlando, FL, June 2023.
  9. S. Naqvi, K. Kar, and S. Mishra, Autonomous pre-conditioning and improved personalization in shared workspaces through data-driven predictive control, Energy and Buildings 285, 2023.
  10. S. Naqvi, K. Kar, S. Bhattacharya, V. Chandan, S. Mishra and T. Salsbury, Air Quality and Comfort Constrained Energy Efficient Operation of Multi-Zone Buildings, To appear in Building and Environment, Accepted August 2023.