Power Systems

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20 papers in the last four weeks, up 122% on the four weeks before. 0.2% of all new papers.

Jul 13Week of Sep 28

Latest papers 149

Oct 5, 2026cs.AR

Reinforcement Learning-Based Optimization of Workload-Aware Power Delivery Networks

Power Delivery Networks (PDNs) are critical components of modern VLSI chips, providing stable voltage levels while satisfying electromigration (EM) and IR-drop constraints. Conventional PDN design methodologies typically rely on worst-case assumptions, often resulting in over-provisioned networks and inefficient use of resources. This paper presents a reinforcement learning-based framework for the optimization of workload-aware PDNs. The proposed methodology first generates workload-aware PDNs using architectural power traces obtained from system-level simulations. These power traces are mapped to spatial power density distributions, enabling adaptive allocation of PDN resources according to local current demand. A reinforcement learning agent then performs wire-width optimization to minimize PDN area while maintaining EM and voltage integrity constraints. Electrical and reliability metrics are obtained using SPICE-based circuit analysis and EM lifetime estimation. Experimental evaluation is performed on a dataset of workload-aware PDNs generated from 4-, 8-, and 16-core multiprocessor floorplans using PARSEC and SPLASH-2 benchmark workloads. Furthermore, the proposed Deep Q-Network (DQN)-based optimizer reduces the average normalized PDN area by 47% while satisfying all EM and IR-drop constraints. Compared to simulated annealing, the proposed approach achieves comparable optimization quality while providing approximately 26

\times

faster optimization.

Oran Hayes, Maria Pantazi-Kypraiou, Athanasios Tziouvaras +4

Trinity College Dublin, Ireland · University of Thessaly, Greece · University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Electronic Design Automation RL for Combinatorial Optimization Power Systems

Oct 5, 2026cs.LG

Physics-Informed but Not Physics-Consistent: Error Geometry and Subspace Projection for Neural AC Power Flow

Recent neural power-flow solvers, including emerging foundation models, achieve accurate voltage predictions, yet such accuracy does not necessarily imply physically consistent solutions. Even small complex voltage errors can yield large AC power-balance residuals. We study this accuracy-consistency gap across PIGNN-GC, GridSFM, gridfm-graphkit, and LUMINA on realistic 2224-bus Great Britain network (GBnetwork) scenarios, with cross-grid evaluation of GridSFM over 31 systems. Using a singular value decomposition (SVD) basis fitted to training AC power-flow solutions, we find that neural prediction errors contain substantial components outside the dominant solution subspace. To address this mismatch, calibrated solution-subspace projection (CSP) suppresses off-subspace prediction components after train-only bias calibration, reducing Mean PB by 67.0%, 37.8%, 40.5%, and 68.9% for PIGNN-GC, GridSFM, gridfm-graphkit, and LUMINA, respectively, relative to calibrated predictions, while improving voltage-magnitude accuracy in all four models. These results identify output-error geometry as an important factor in physics-consistent neural AC power flow. Code: https://github.com/Kimchangheon/neural-acpf-error-geometry

Changhun Kim, Timon Conrad, Redwanul Karim +7

Pattern Recognition Lab, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, Germany · Institute of Electrical Energy Systems, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, Germany

Physics-Informed GNNs Power Systems

Sep 30, 2026stat.ML

Learning to Price Electricity for Optimal Demand Response

There is considerable interest in using time-varying electricity prices to shape consumer demand response, and better align energy demand with renewable production. However, optimal prices generally vary over time in response to complex signals such as weather forecasts, sunrise/sunset times, and day-of-week patterns; and existing methods are not able to make efficient use of such rich contextual information. Here, we propose a neural-network-based algorithm for contextual energy pricing, modeling pricing as a Stackelberg game and leveraging a mean-field solution representation from Mehrabi et al.~(2024). The approach learns constrained mappings from contextual features to feasible price signals. We validate our approach by simulating the energy grid in several US cities, and show that incorporating contextual information can considerably increase the value of the demand response programs.

Jing Shang, Mohammad Mehrabi, Xinyang Zhou +3

Stanford University · National Laboratory of the Rockies · Prime Coalition +1

Demand Response Dynamic Pricing Power Systems

Sep 28, 2026cs.AI

PowerBench: A Benchmark for Agentic Retrieval and Reasoning in Power Systems

Large language model (LLM) agents offer new opportunities for automated analysis in industry. However, rigorous evaluation of such agents-for example, within power system scenarios-remains hindered: real operational data are confidential, and existing public resources fail to fully capture the chained dependencies and heterogeneous evidence. To address this gap, we propose PowerBench, comprising (1) a generation framework that derives interconnected heterogeneous operational data through a common dependency chain, and (2) a synthetic dataset generated by this framework. The dataset covers 761 devices across 100 device types, with 13.35 million hourly telemetry records spanning two years and 24,939 operational documents. Building on this dataset, we construct 300 questions across three task families that evaluate frontier LLMs' ability to complete analysis tasks that require autonomous evidence retrieval and reasoning across interconnected and heterogeneous data under restricted tool calls and time budgets. Results demonstrate that the evaluated frontier LLMs remain challenged on these tasks: the best model reaches only 74.2% joint accuracy. Our trace analysis further reveals that model performance varies across evidence discovery, content retrieval, tool use, reasoning over evidence, and answer submission. These findings provide detailed insights for evaluating LLM agents and guiding their reliable deployment in industry. The framework, dataset, and benchmark tasks are available at https://github.com/open-compass/PowerBench.

Xijing Wang, Yinsheng Yao, Jinru Ding +5

Tongji University · Johns Hopkins University · Shanghai Artificial Intelligence Laboratory +3

LLM Agent Evaluation AI Agent Benchmarks Agentic Retrieval Power Systems

Sep 24, 2026eess.SY

GridSFM: A Foundation Model for Solving AC Optimal Power Flow

We introduce GridSFM, a framework that combines a pretrained foundation model across grid topologies with physics-informed fine-tuning for solving AC Optimal Power Flow (AC-OPF) at scale. It is a

15

million parameter physics-inspired graph neural network pretrained across

54

topologies of

500

to

4{,}000

buses. Our model attains a

2.45\%

zero-shot generation-cost error on a

10{,}000

bus case held-out operating conditions with no degradation as system size grows. Building on this, we pair the pretrained backbone with a physics-informed fine-tuning design based on Newton's method for power flow. With only

100

solved instances, GridSFM adapts to unseen grids up to

10{,}000

buses. We show it out performs single topology, dedicated neural network models that are trained more data, both in terms of cost and solver iterations when deployed as warm starting points. In designing this foundation model, we overcome the fact that the feasible set for AC-OPF can be disconnected. This is an obstruction that prevents any continuous neural network from approximating the solution map. To do so, we lift the problem and relax its constraints with logarithmically penalized slacks. We prove that the resulting elastic feasible set is contractible, that the AC-OPF minimizers remain minimizers of the elastic problem above an explicit penalty threshold, and that projecting an approximate solution back onto the AC-OPF feasible set is well posed. We release all models, data, and code so that the community can build on a shared starting point for AC-OPF.

Luke Bhan, Weiwei Yang, Margaret Capetz +1

University of California, San Diego · Microsoft Research · University of Washington

Neural Surrogate Modeling Optimal Power Flow Physics-Informed GNNs Power Systems

Sep 24, 2026cs.LG

From Graphs to Feeders: Constraint-Guided Diffusion for Rule-Compliant Feeder Generation

Generative modeling approaches often focus on recovering broad statistical characteristics from the training data. In the context of graph generation, this may refer to degree distributions, clustering coefficients, or spectral properties. However, generating usable distribution feeders when detailed feeder models are unavailable requires more than matching generic graph statistics: the sampled topology must also obey electrical compatibility and radiality rules. We therefore formulate feeder synthesis as a constraint-guided graph generation problem and propose the Power-Grid-constrained Discrete Denoising Diffusion model, PG-DiGress, which learns categorical node and edge patterns from feeder data, while respecting domain-specific rules. Specifically, it injects feeder constraints into the reverse diffusion process through soft masks that suppress incompatible edge classes during denoising, followed by a final projection step that rebuilds a connected, rule-compliant feeder graph. We evaluate PG-DiGress using graph-distribution similarity, feeder-rule satisfaction, structural validity, and downstream model construction. Compared with the unconstrained baseline, PG-DiGress increases the strict feeder pass rate from 13.7% to 96.8%. We also successfully convert the generated graphs into executable feeder models for downstream analysis.

Yu Qin, Andrew Glaws, Aadil Latif +1

National Laboratory of the Rockies, Golden, Colorado, USA

Constrained Generative Modeling Diffusion Models Graph Diffusion Power Systems

Sep 23, 2026eess.SY

EvEMTBench: An Open Benchmark for Machine Learning in Power System Protection

Studies of machine-learning-based power system protection are difficult to compare because task definitions, measurement access, data partitions, metrics, and generalization conditions often differ. EvEMTBench addresses this gap with an open, executable, and versioned benchmark that fixes these evaluation choices while leaving model design open. Across four grids spanning 20-345 kV, it defines 12 protection and event-analysis functions instantiated as 24 scored tasks and supports structured evaluation across observability conditions, predefined distribution shifts, and zero-shot and fine-tuned cross-grid transfer. Committed partitions, leakage controls, and reproducible reporting provide a common basis for comparing future methods. A reference evaluation spanning trivial, conventional, feature-based, and deep-learning baselines shows that wider observability is not uniformly beneficial, shifted conditions can reveal failures not apparent in-distribution, and cross-grid transfer is substantially stronger for fault detection than for fault localization. Protection-relevant diagnostics identify failure modes not apparent from primary metrics alone. EvEMTBench therefore makes generalization in machine-learning-based protection an explicit and reproducible evaluation problem.

Julian Oelhaf, Georg Kordowich, Christian Bergler +3

Pattern Recognition Lab, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, Erlangen 91058, Germany · Institute of Electrical Energy Systems, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, Erlangen 91058, Germany · Department of Electrical Engineering, Media and Computer Science, Ostbayerische Technische Hochschule Amberg-Weiden, Amberg 92224, Germany

Domain Generalization Fault Detection Fault Localization Power Systems

Sep 22, 2026cs.LG

Towards Hierarchical GNNs for multi-grid power flow: generalization across operating scenarios

Hierarchical latent communication improves the generalization of a multi-grid power-flow model to new operating scenarios. The module exchanges information through two reduced graphs within a GENCO-based corrective network. We compare Kron-derived transports, a same-anchor Quotient construction and a flat backbone in preliminary trainings of 200 epochs on three grid topologies, with three initialization seeds per model. Evaluation uses 200 newly generated, preselected scenarios per grid. On the training topologies, Kron reduces the macro family-balanced voltage error from 5.660 +- 0.899 to 0.851 +- 0.110: an 85.0% reduction relative to Flat GENCO and 31.0% relative to Quotient, which reaches 1.235 +- 0.225. Both hierarchical models outperform a per-bus mean fitted on training solutions on every training topology in all three seeds. These results demonstrate generalization across operating scenarios within the studied topologies, with one set of learned parameters shared across grids. Evaluation on two additional topologies distinguishes this achievement from cross-topology generalization: the current models do not yet outperform the fitted reference in that calibrated- transfer setting. This preprint presents the architecture and preliminary evidence for hierarchical communication as a component of multi-grid power-flow learning, with generalization to unseen topologies as the next development objective.

Carmine Delle Femine, Leire Garin Atxaga, Asier Diaz-Iglesias +3

Vicomtech Foundation, Department of Energy, Basque Research and Technology Alliance (BRTA), Donostia/San Sebastián, Spain · Department of Languages and Information Systems, University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU), Donostia/San Sebastián, Spain

Neural Surrogate Modeling Graph Neural Networks Power Systems

Sep 21, 2026eess.SY

Offline Reinforcement Learning for Distribution-Grid Protection

Data-driven protection may complement conventional relays in distribution grids whose operating conditions vary with distributed generation, switching events, and changing short-circuit levels. We study line-selective tripping from static trajectories of a realistically simulated CIGRE medium-voltage network using offline reinforcement learning. A convolutional Q-network receives causal voltage-current phasor and apparent-impedance features, optionally together with raw waveforms, and is trained with conservative Q-learning (CQL). A controlled sensitivity study evaluates two observation windows, reward variants, and three CQL weights under a common split and training protocol; one exploratory post-hoc run additionally increases the discount factor from

γ

=0.95 to 0.99. On 225 held-out episodes, the best per-timestep result is obtained with combined input and CQL weight

α

=0.9, reaching precision 0.9993, recall 0.9496, and F1-score 0.9738. Because dense per-timestep scores do not encode the terminal semantics of relay operation, we also evaluate the first non-wait action in each episode. The default combined-input agent selects the correct line-trip action first in 98.13% of 214 fault episodes, but trips in 72.73% of the 11 non-fault episodes. In the post-hoc run, the corresponding rates are 98.60% and 54.55%, respectively. The results show that dense predictive performance and terminal protection behavior can lead to different model rankings. Offline CQL therefore demonstrates strong faulted-line selection on the simulated fault episodes, while the static trajectories, small non-fault set, and single-seed post-hoc design preclude conclusions about practical relay security or deployment readiness.

Julian Oelhaf, Alexander Luce, Christian Bergler +2

Pattern Recognition Lab, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen–Nürnberg, Erlangen, Germany · Department of Electrical Engineering, Media and Computer Science, Ostbayerische Technische Hochschule Amberg-Weiden, Amberg, Germany

Fault Detection Offline RL Power Systems

Sep 21, 2026eess.SY

The Operational Value of Spatial Dependence in Renewable Forecast Scenarios for Single-Period Economic Dispatch: A Controlled Ablation Study

Renewable forecasts are evaluated by statistical skill (e.g., CRPS), but grid operators pay for realized dispatch cost. We diagnose what drives dispatch value in a single-period newsvendor-style economic dispatch using real public data from two European transmission systems (CWE, DE-4TSO). Spatial coherence across forecast sites falls below the pre-specified 1% practical-significance threshold: a controlled ablation holding per-zone marginal forecasts bit-identical and varying only cross-zone dependence (10 configurations, 3 seeds, paired-bootstrap confidence intervals) shows a coherence gain of at most 0.64% of dispatch cost, indistinguishable from zero in 3 of 10 configurations, reached only under an unrealistic 8-fold forecast-error stress test. Decision-focused training, an established paradigm in this venue, delivers a robust 2.82-5.19% gain. A parametric Gaussian-copula approximation matches the empirical copula at realistic error magnitudes but performs worse than no dependence under extreme stress. A single-seed sweep shows that a 12% energy-score gain changes cost by less than 0.1%. Results characterize this single-period dispatch class; a lightweight four-period extension supports the same conclusion. For this dispatch class, spatially-correlated scenario generation provides limited operational value on its own; grid operators and forecast vendors should instead evaluate dependence models by downstream decision value and prioritize decision-focused training.

Jayakumar Manoharan

Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), Charlotte, NC, USA

Time Series Forecasting Probabilistic Forecasting Power Systems

Sep 20, 2026eess.IV

Learning-Based 3D Reconstruction of Power Networks from Aerial Point Clouds

This paper presents an end-to-end framework for reconstructing overhead power utility network topology and extracting span-level physical metadata from large-scale aerial LiDAR. The pipeline begins with semantic segmentation of the input point cloud using an improved KPConv-based model, in which data sampling and loss functions are adapted to emphasize pole and conductor (wire) classes. Network topology inference then proceeds in two stages: (i) pole instances are obtained by clustering pole-class points and validating candidates using geometric criteria, including height and verticality estimated via PCA, and (ii) candidate pole pairs are evaluated using a heuristic method and a lightweight ResNet-based classifier on 2D top-view projections of pole and wire point distributions to determine whether a physical conductor span exists. By explicitly classifying candidate spans, the approach mitigates common failure modes of heuristic connectivity rules in dense or cluttered scenes and under partial wire observation. For each validated wire, attributes regarding utility infrastructure geometry are computed, including endpoint conductor heights, ground elevation, sag-related lowest-point features, conductor arrangement, and wire width. Evaluation on multiple real-world aerial LiDAR datasets demonstrates decimeter-level endpoint height accuracy and approximately 9% relative improvement in recall for topology reconstruction compared to heuristic nearest-neighbor baselines, with larger gains in complex layouts.

Rishabh Jain, Anuja Saini, Vishal Jain

AiDash

3D Point Cloud Segmentation 3D Reconstruction Power Systems

Sep 20, 2026cs.LG

Cost-Aware Reinforcement Learning with Action Masking and Projection for Battery Energy Storage Dispatch under Suppressed-Spread Market Shifts

Battery energy storage system (BESS) dispatch must preserve operational feasibility while declining price spreads reduce the margin available to pay for cycling. We study a proximal policy optimization (PPO) controller whose pre-selection physical action mask and emergency projection are separated from a causal, forecast-informed economic advisory. All forecast-dependent methods receive the same causal 24-step forecast and grid-side settlement. Across five PPO seeds, advice-on net profit is 30.59 and 18.04 USD per 336-hour T1 and T2 window, versus 36.77 and 22.94 USD for proxy-cost MPC; PPO remains below this reference in both periods. Advice raises T2 profit from 16.45 to 18.04 USD while reducing throughput, but is immaterial in T1. On disjoint weekly blocks, PPO is stable under daily, weekly, and blended seasonal forecasts, weakens under persistence, and remains below proxy-cost MPC. Paired diagnostics localize changes to the observed 5-10 USD/MWh regime with mixed SoC-dependent effects. An M0-M6 ablation shows that mask removal sends thousands of infeasible requests to projection, while removing both physical layers exposes ramp violations. The evidence separates economic screening from feasibility enforcement without claiming formal safety, lifecycle-optimal aging, or RL dominance.

Kuanlin Chen, Chen-Wei Kuo, Cheng-En Ou

Independent Researcher Taoyuan, Taiwan · National Tsing Hua University Hsinchu, Taiwan · Independent Researcher

Constrained RL Proximal Policy Optimization Power Systems

Sep 16, 2026cs.LG

Peak-Aware Short-Term Load Forecasting Across Distribution Grid Aggregation Levels

For distribution system operators, short-term load forecasting (STLF) supports congestion management, voltage control, and asset protection. Most existing approaches focus on overall accuracy across all time steps and neglect performance during high-demand (HD) periods, where larger forecast errors can increase the risk of congestion and voltage violations. In this paper, we study peak-aware STLF across three operator-relevant distribution grid aggregation levels, area codes (AC), secondary substations (SUB), and low-voltage (LV) feeders, using open datasets from the United Kingdom and Switzerland. We compare statistical baselines, machine learning models (LightGBM and XGBoost), and recent time-series foundation models (Chronos Bolt and Chronos-2) under a peak-aware evaluation framework that reports both overall and HD forecasting performance using NMAE and MAPE. The results show that Chronos-2 achieves the best HD performance across all aggregation levels, with HD-NMAE and HD-MAPE of 0.039 and 4.53% at AC, 0.080 and 9.45% at SUB, and 0.138 and 16.14% at LV, while Chronos-Bolt consistently ranks second best. Compared with the gradient boosted ML models, Chronos-2 reduces mean HD-NMAE by about 20-51% across levels while remaining best or near-best on the overall metrics. A quantile analysis of the probabilistic Chronos outputs further identifies aggregation-specific operating points, and runtime measurements indicate that foundation model inference is fast enough for practical deployment. Overall, the findings highlight peak-aware evaluation and aggregation specific quantile selection as a practical pathway toward more operationally relevant STLF in distribution networks.

Souhardya Chattopadhyay, Julian Oelhaf, Antonia Schoening +5

Pattern Recognition Lab, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg · Siemens AG, Smart Infrastructure · Department of Electrical Engineering, Media and Computer Science, Ostbayerische Technische Hochschule Amberg-Weiden

Time Series Forecasting Electricity Load Forecasting Time-Series Foundation Models Power Systems

Sep 16, 2026eess.SY

Mixed-Integer Nonlinear Differentiable Predictive Control for Underground Pumped Hydro Energy Storage Systems

This paper extends Mixed-Integer Differentiable Predictive Control (MI-DPC) to multi-modal discrete decisions and nonconvex polynomial dynamics arising in Underground Pumped Hydro Energy Storage Systems (UPHES). A neural policy mapping problem parameters to continuous setpoints and integer mode selections via a Gumbel-Softmax layer is trained in a self-supervised manner by differentiating the expectation of the finite horizon control objective through the nonlinear dynamics model. Three methodological contributions enable this extension: a parallel differentiable simulator that preserves gradient magnitude, a Transformer encoder that captures long-range temporal dependencies, and a Gumbel-Softmax temperature annealing schedule that regularizes the combinatorial search. We demonstrate the framework on day-ahead scheduling of a UPHES, a large-scale mixed-integer optimal control problem with nonlinear unit performance curves and volume-head coupling. MI-DPC achieves only 1.6% suboptimality relative to a piecewise mixed-integer quadratic programming baseline, while providing five orders of magnitude speedup in online scheduling time.

Honghui Zheng, Ján Boldocký, Yury Dvorkin +1

Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore MD, US · Slovak University of Technology in Bratislava, Slovakia

Model Predictive Control Optimal Control Power Systems

Sep 15, 2026cs.LG

A Systematic Evaluation of Machine Learning Methods for Fault Detection and Line Identification in Electrical Power Grids

The integration of renewable energy sources into the electrical grid introduces complex challenges in fault detection and coordination of grid recovery mechanisms. Traditional relay protection systems, which operate based on static rules and predefined thresholds, are inadequate for addressing these challenges, particularly in detecting and isolating faults such as short circuits. Consequently, the conventional methodologies applied to electrical network protection frequently fail to achieve optimal performance in fault detection, especially in terms of adherence to safety standards and the selective limitation of damage. Recent research indicates that machine learning (ML)-based approaches can effectively tackle these issues; however, variations in grid configurations and analysis windows have impeded consistent comparative assessments. In this study, we assess the efficacy of various ML models in detecting electrical faults and pinpointing defective transmission lines within a 10 ms measurement interval - a critical time-frame for real-time operational viability, for the first time. The most effective model attained an F1 score of 0.991 +/- 0.018 and demonstrated a processing time of 0.342ms +/- 0.509ms.

Julian Oelhaf, Georg Kordowich, Paula Andrea Pérez-Toro +4

Pattern Recognition Lab, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg · Institute of Electrical Energy Systems, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg

Fault Localization Fault Diagnosis Power Systems

Sep 15, 2026eess.SY

Unified Heterogeneous Graph Neural Network solver for Power Flow, Optimal Power Flow and State Estimation

Power Flow (PF), Optimal Power Flow (OPF), and State Estimation (SE) are fundamental problems in power system analysis, but solving them is computationally expensive. Graph Neural Networks (GNNs) have been proposed as fast surrogates, yet existing solvers are trained for a single problem at a time, producing narrow models that must be rebuilt for each new task. We propose a more general approach: a single Heterogeneous Residual Gated Graph Convolutional Network that solves all three problems with one shared backbone. Rather than learning one mapping, the model learns a reusable representation of how the network behaves, from which PF, OPF, and SE can each be estimated. Trained jointly on the three problems across diverse topologies and loading conditions, and evaluated on the IEEE 14-bus and 118-bus systems, the shared model matches the accuracy of task-specific GNN solvers and stays robust on unseen loading levels and topologies. These results show that a single model can capture the basic operation of a power network and serve several analysis tasks at once, a first step toward a foundation model for power systems.

Ferran Bohigas-Daranas, Hamid Latif-Martínez, Eduardo Prieto-Araujo +2

Heterogeneous GNNs Multi-Task Learning Optimal Power Flow Power Systems

Sep 14, 2026math.OC

Towards Sustainable Hydrogen Systems: Supply Chain Optimization with Model Predictive Control and Reinforcement Learning

Hydrogen supply chains are expected to play a central role in future low-carbon energy systems by enabling renewable energy integration, long-duration storage, and decarbonization of industrial and transportation sectors. However, their operation is challenged by renewable generation variability, electricity price fluctuations, uncertain hydrogen demand, and engineering constraints associated with electrolyzers, energy storage, and grid interaction. As hydrogen infrastructure expands toward commercial deployment, operational strategies must balance economic performance, reliability, and sustainability under dynamic and uncertain conditions. This paper investigates and compares four control approaches for a renewable-powered hydrogen supply chain: a rule-based controller (RBC), model predictive control (MPC), reinforcement learning without forecasts (RL-NF), and reinforcement learning with forecast-augmented observations (RL-F). All methods are evaluated within a unified, physically realistic framework incorporating electrolyzer minimum-load and ramp-rate constraints, battery and hydrogen storage dynamics, grid import limits, and consistent economic assumptions, enabling a fair comparison under identical operating conditions. Simulation results show that MPC achieves the highest economic performance by exploiting short-term forecasts to coordinate storage, reduce grid dependence, and improve efficiency. RL-NF demonstrates robust and competitive performance without future information, highlighting the capability of learning-based methods to discover effective policies from experience. RL-F does not consistently outperform its no-forecast counterpart, suggesting that forecast uncertainty and increased state complexity can limit forecast-augmented learning. The results provide guidance for selecting operational control strategies in future hydrogen energy systems.

Mahammad Valiyev

Department of Chemical Engineering University of Southern California Los Angeles, California, United States

RL Control Model Predictive Control Supply Chain Management Power Systems

Sep 14, 2026cs.LG

Offline Reinforcement Learning for Wind Farm Control: A Wind Tunnel Study under Dynamic Wind Directions

This paper addresses the wind farm power maximization problem in the presence of wind direction changes. Specifically, a model-free Modified Twin Delayed Deep Deterministic Policy Gradient with Behavior Cloning (MTD3-BC) algorithm is proposed to tackle this task through yaw control under varying wind direction conditions. MTD3-BC is an offline reinforcement learning (RL) algorithm that aims to infer good behavior from only a precollected offline dataset. Additionally, to ensure smooth and moderate yaw adjustments, a new action consistency term is introduced into the policy optimization objective. Unlike online RL methods, MTD3-BC does not require extensive interactions with a wind farm simulator during training, significantly reducing computational costs and training time. A wind tunnel experiment is conducted to validate the effectiveness of the algorithm under varying wind directions. The results demonstrate that MTD3-BC successfully mitigates wake effects, delivering farm-level power gains of approximately 10% over the baseline greedy strategy and performance on par with a data-calibrated model-based wake-steering benchmark, while requiring no wake model and only a small fraction of the training cost of online RL. To our knowledge, this is the first time an offline RL wind farm control policy has been validated and demonstrated experimentally.

Yuhan Su, Hongyang Dong, Simone Tamaro +3

Intelligent Control and Smart Energy (ICSE) Research Group, School of Engineering, University of Warwick, Coventry CV4 7AL, U.K. · Wind Energy Institute, Technical University of Munich, 85748 Garching bei München, Germany

RL Control Reinforcement Learning Offline RL Power Systems

Sep 9, 2026eess.SP

Deep Learning-Based Detection of Electrical Faults and Power Quality Disturbances in Aerospace Power Systems

More Electric Aircraft require fast and reliable monitoring of high-frequency electrical networks, yet most power quality disturbance and fault diagnosis methods are developed for conventional 50 or 60 Hz grids. This work presents a hardware-aware deep learning framework for multiclass detection of electrical faults and power quality disturbances in a 400 Hz aerospace power system. A high-fidelity simulation model inspired by the Boeing 787 electrical architecture generates voltage and current waveforms for 21 normal, disturbance, switching, open-circuit, and short-circuit conditions. Two datasets, each containing 73,500 samples, are formed from one-dimensional time-series signals and short-time Fourier transform time-frequency representations. Signal-processing augmentation, domain randomization, and class-specific generative adversarial networks increase waveform diversity, and the time-series dataset is released through IEEE DataPort. We compare 1D and 2D convolutional neural networks, long short-term memory networks, CNN-LSTM hybrids, ResNet, MobileNet, and VGG models under common training conditions. A compact ResNet provides the best accuracy-complexity tradeoff, achieving 96.94 percent software test accuracy with 175,685 parameters. After 8-bit quantization and deployment on a Xilinx Zynq UltraScale Plus MPSoC ZCU102, the model achieves 95.87 percent accuracy and a measured mean neural-network accelerator latency of 6.90 ms per input record. The results establish simulation-based, accelerator-level feasibility for embedded edge AI in aircraft electrical health monitoring and motivate future end-to-end data acquisition and experimental validation.

Ian C. Guzmán, Radu Babiceanu, Berker Peköz

Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, Daytona Beach, FL 32114, USA · Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, MI 49008, USA

Time Series Classification Edge ML Fault Diagnosis Power Systems

Sep 9, 2026cs.CR

From Cycle Space to Cycle Manifold: Limits and Achievability of Blind False Data Injection Attacks

A false data injection attack (FDIA) can change the estimated grid state while evading a residual-based bad data detector (BDD). Existing blind attacks learn a low-rank measurement subspace, but this algebraic view does not state the physical grid constraints that make an attack stealthy or the minimum information needed to recover the complete attack space. Under the connected direct-current (DC) branch-flow model, we show that the residual-sensitive subspace of the noiseless orthogonal test is exactly the weighted cycle space. Its orthogonal complement is therefore the complete stealthy attack space, making weighted cycle-space knowledge both necessary and sufficient for complete blind FDIA. This space identifies the topology only up to 2-isomorphism and the relative cycle-edge parameters only up to one scale per biconnected component; bridge parameters are neither identified nor required. We then formulate a computationally unconstrained benchmark and a tractable measurement-only reconstruction method. Experiments on IEEE systems compare BDD bypass rate at a 95% nominal-acceptance threshold against state impact. As a compact alternating-current (AC) extension, we characterize feasible branch P/Q measurements by a cycle manifold and demonstrate topology-assisted manifold fitting and measurement generation on a graphics processing unit (GPU). In the lossless fixed-voltage small-angle limit, the normal space of the active-power slice reduces to the DC weighted cycle space.

Xin Li, Chenhan Xiao, Jonathan Cohen +3

Faculty of Computer and Information Science, Ben-Gurion-University, Be’er Sheva, Israel · School of Electrical, Computer and Energy Engineering, Arizona State University, AZ, USA · Department of Computer Science, Shamoon College of Engineering, Be’er Sheva, Israel

False Data Injection Attacks Power Systems

Sep 8, 2026q-fin.GN

AI for AI: Optimizing Additional Infrastructure Build-out to Power Artificial Intelligence Data Centers

The twenty-first century's transformative technology, artificial intelligence, is increasingly constrained by the twentieth century's transformative technology, the electricity grid. Rapid growth in electricity demand from data centers is leading to higher electricity prices, without a compensating supply-side response. We develop a framework linking data-center load growth, available generation capacity, and market-clearing prices to understand this phenomenon. We first analyze a deterministic model to show how differing estimates of demand and supply growth rates affect prices. We then model the expansion of new data centers and their associated electricity demand, together with build-outs of new electricity supply, as stochastic processes,resulting in probabilistic distributions of supply, demand, and prices rather than a single forecast. Finally, we formulate generation expansion as a stochastic control problem in which a revenue-maximizing investor dynamically chooses the intensity of supply-side investments. The analysis highlights a central challenge of the data-center build-out: even when rapid demand growth increases the need for new generation, the uncertainties related to load forecasts, development execution risks, and value cannibalization from overbuilding capacity may weaken incentives to invest at the pace required to keep electricity prices stable.

Alexander Crosier, Kyle Onghai, Ronnie Sircar

Formerly Princeton University · ORFE Department, Princeton University · ORFE Department, Bendheim Center for Finance and Andlinger Center for Energy & the Environment, Princeton University

Sep 7, 2026cs.AI

Data-Optimized Contingency Screening: A Machine Learning Approach to Power System Security

Ensuring the security of the power system is essential for stability and reliability, especially in the event of disruption. Effective classification of contingency in power systems enables proactive decision-making and mitigates large-scale breakdowns and failures. This study explores the use of machine learning algorithms to classify security levels of contingencies in power systems into safe, moderate or severe classes. For this approach, Newton-Raphson load flow method extracts system data from contingency scenarios, using Overall Performance Index (OPI) as safety measure. For data pre-processing, Synthetic Minority Over-Sampling Technique (SMOTE) and Principal Component Analysis (PCA) is used to address class imbalance and reduce dimensionality, respectively. K-Nearest Neighbours (KNN), Random Forest (RF) and Support Vector Machines (SVM) is trained and evaluated on datasets generated through N-k contingency scenarios for k equal 1, 2, and 3 on IEEE-14 and IEEE-30 bus systems using four hybrid pre-processing configurations: normalized, SMOTE-balanced, PCA-transformed, and a combined SMOTE PCA-transformed. Performance is assessed by precision, recall and F1 score, with priority given to the severe contingency classes. The RF achieved the highest F1 scores of 0.97 in IEEE-30 and 0.86 in IEEE-14, SVM benefits significantly from PCA and improves the accuracy of the classification, while KNN is best suited for SMOTE and PCA conversion. The findings show that PCA contributes more than SMOTE to the overall performance of the model. However, SMOTE improves recall but can introduce false positives and is therefore a compromise of accuracy. This study highlights machine learning as a scalable and powerful alternative to traditional contingency analysis, which improves the assessment of security in real time.

Joshua Salako, Folajimi Osikomaiya, Olakorede Olamiju

dept. of Electrical and Electronics Engineering, Federal University of Agriculture, Abeokuta, Nigeria

Sep 3, 2026cs.LG

Risk and Anomaly Identification for Distribution Network Optimal Operation Based on Reinforcement Learning and Uncertainty Quantification

Reliable operation of modern distribution networks requires timely identification of operational risks and anomalous events under pervasive uncertainty. In practice, operators must identify risks that are inherent in stochastic yet in-distribution conditions, and anomalies that correspond to out-of-distribution behaviors such as unusual load patterns, extreme weather or cyber-physical attacks. This paper addresses this joint risk and anomaly identification problem for optimal distribution network operation and proposes a deep reinforcement learning framework that is explicitly uncertainty aware. We integrate distributional and Bayesian deep reinforcement learning to realize a second- order uncertainty quantification scheme that decomposes total uncertainty into aleatoric and epistemic components, which are respectively used to characterize inherent risk and out-of- distribution anomalies. The resulting epistemic estimates drive both exploration during training and out-of-distribution detec- tion with fallback control during deployment, whereas aleatoric estimates are used to characterize intrinsic operational risk. Simulation results demonstrate the performance of our DRL agent and the effectiveness of the uncertainty quantification.

Ziqi Zhang

College of Automation Engineering, Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Nanjing 211100, China

Risk-Sensitive RL OOD Detection Power Systems

Sep 2, 2026cs.LG

A Comparative Study of Graph Representations for GNN-Based Power Grid Control in L2RPN

Graph construction is a critical but underexamined design choice in deep reinforcement learning for power grid control. We present a controlled experimental comparison of different graph representations, including physical topology, electrical-sensitivity, and hybrid variants for topology control in the Learning to Run a Power Network (L2RPN) environment. Our findings indicate that matching graph complexity to task granularity is more important than maximizing representational richness, and highlight the importance of controlled representation studies at scale.

Adrian Degenkolb, Qiong Huang, Benjamin Schäfer

Karlsruhe Institute of Technology Karlsruhe, Germany

Power Systems Graph Neural Networks Reinforcement Learning

Sep 1, 2026cs.LG

OutageDiT: A Generative Foundation Model for Power Outage Forecasting and Scenario Simulation

Power-outage planning requires scenarios before an event occurs. These scenarios must represent uncertainty in magnitude, timing, and duration while preserving temporal dependence. However, severe events are rare, and data from any single region contain few examples of extreme outage and restoration patterns. To address this challenge, we introduce OutageDiT, a foundation model for generating seven-day outage trajectories at quarter-hour resolution, trained on outage and weather records across the United States. Specifically, a condition encoder processes the historical context and known future covariates once per forecast, and a shallow flow decoder reuses the resulting horizon-aligned states to generate complete trajectories. The resulting samples support point forecasting, uncertainty quantification, and conditional event simulation within one deep generative model. Across outage forecasting benchmarks, OutageDiT improves forecast accuracy and scenario quality over strong baselines and supports zero-shot transfer to held-out regions. Together, these results position conditional outage simulation as a bridge from outage forecasting to operational planning under uncertainty.

Yunqin Zhu, Feng Qiu, Yao Xie

H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology · Argonne National Laboratory

Conditional Generative Modeling Time-Series Foundation Models Probabilistic Time Series Forecasting Power Systems

Sep 1, 2026cs.LG

Reinforcement Learning and Rule-Based Peer-to-Peer Pricing in Residential PV-BES Communities

This paper compares rule-based and learning-based pricing mechanisms for peer-to-peer (P2P) electricity trading in residential photovoltaic communities. The rule-based benchmarks comprise bill-sharing as an ex post allocation mechanism, the mid-market rate, and supply-demand-ratio pricing. The reinforcement-learning (RL) formulation is implemented through a Deep Q-Network and evaluated under multiplier-based and learnable SDR-shaped pricing, with a fixed-parameter SDR variant as a non-learning control. Performance is assessed through community savings together with complementary financial and operational indicators. In the base PV-only configuration, the rule-based benchmarks outperform the best RL policy. With battery energy storage, evaluated for the RL policies only, community savings under the best RL policy increase from EUR 734.23 to EUR 978.52. Across the learning-based modes and in both configurations, SDR-shaped pricing outperforms the multiplier-based parameterization considered. The results indicate that rule-based pricing remains highly competitive wherever the two families are compared directly, and that storage substantially improves the learning-based outcomes under this accounting, while the distribution of benefits remains heterogeneous across households.

Pablo Benalcazar, Maciej Kalka, Wilian Guamán +1

Division of Energy Economics, Mineral and Energy Economy Research Institute, Polish Academy of Sciences, Kraków, Poland · GITEA, Escuela Superior Politécnica de Chimborazo (ESPOCH), Riobamba, Ecuador

Reinforcement Learning Dynamic Pricing Power Systems

Aug 31, 2026cs.AI

RestoreBench: Can AI Agents Restore Power Flow Convergence?

Large Language Model (LLM) agents increasingly automate multi-step engineering workflows through tool use, interpretation of intermediate results, and iterative planning. Diagnosing and resolving non-convergent power flow cases is a promising yet largely unexplored application, as it requires engineering judgment, experimentation, and decision-making within constrained action spaces. We introduce a benchmark that evaluates these capabilities across multiple LLMs and three architectures: \emph{chatbot}, \emph{single agent}, and \emph{multi-agent} systems. The evaluation covers two power grids and 46 cases per grid, each requiring one or more corrective actions to restore convergence. The benchmark defines the simulation environment, observation and action spaces, and evaluation metrics, providing a reproducible foundation for developing agentic AI systems for power system planning and operation. The code is available at https://github.com/Mansutti081/RestoreBench

Riccardo Mansutti, Andrea Pomarico, Robert Jakob +3

1ETH Zürich · 2Politecnico di Milano · 3Harvard University

Multi-Agent LLM Systems LLM Agent Evaluation AI Agent Benchmarks Power Systems

Aug 31, 2026eess.SY

Safety Screening for Voltage Control in Active Distribution Grids via Distributionally Robust Conformal Screening

Deploying a new control policy for voltage control in active distribution grids requires evidence that physical limits will be satisfied before the policy is tested on the physical grid. This assessment is difficult for two reasons. First, simulations cannot capture every disturbance, modeling error, and device interaction present in the real grid. Second, historical measurements reflect operation under existing control policies, whereas a new policy may drive the grid into different operating conditions. To address these challenges, we propose Distributionally Robust Conformal Safety Screening (DR-CSS), a policy-agnostic framework for pre-deployment, scenario-by-scenario screening of a new control policy using historical data and a nominal simulator. For each new scenario, the simulator predicts a future voltage trajectory for the whole grid; DR-CSS then constructs a conformal safety interval around this prediction using historical simulation-to-reality errors. The interval is further enlarged to account for closed-loop changes induced by the deployment of the new policy and its interactions with the remaining controllers. To the best of our knowledge, DR-CSS is the first framework in power systems to combine historical data from an existing control policy with an imperfect simulator for pre-deployment safety screening of a new policy. Experiments on the IEEE 33-bus and IEEE 141-bus systems evaluate the deployment of learning-based voltage control policies and show that DR-CSS identifies all unsafe test scenarios. To reduce unnecessary warnings on safe scenarios, we adapt the safety intervals to different operating conditions and gradually introduce new policies with recalibration after each stage. These extensions increase the informational value of the safety screening and support safer deployment decisions in active distribution grids.

Sarra Bouchkati, Petros Ellinas, Adriana Geisler +4

IAEW at RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany · Department of Wind and Energy Systems, Technical University of Denmark, Kongens Lyngby, Denmark

Safety-Critical Control Conformal Risk Control Power Systems

Aug 25, 2026eess.SY

Scalable Self-Supervised Learning for Multiphase AC-OPF in Distribution Systems with Topology Reconfiguration

The proliferation of distributed energy resources (DERs) in distribution grids enables the active coordination of these assets to reduce costs and enable cleaner operations. Realizing this potential requires solving multiphase AC optimal power flow (AC-OPF) quickly across varying loads, DER availabilities, and topology reconfigurations, at much greater speed and scale than conventional nonlinear solvers. Learning-based surrogates can offer millisecond inference, yet existing methods target largely balanced transmission systems and do not scale to the multiphase, unbalanced, and reconfigurable nature of distribution feeders at utility scale. We present the Penalty + Sequential Linearized Feasibility Seeking (SLFS) algorithm, a self-supervised learning framework for multiphase distribution AC-OPF under switch-induced topology changes. Penalty+SLFS requires no labeled optimal solutions and trains directly from the AC-OPF objective and constraints through a differentiable fixed-point power flow solver, avoiding expensive label generation and admitting robust training procedures. Topology changes are handled efficiently using Sherman-Morrison-Woodbury updates of the admittance-matrix inverse, while an M-step Jacobian approximation accelerates differentiation through the power flow solver. At inference, SLFS repairs any infeasible predictions, providing feasibility guarantees with low computational overhead. On IEEE feeders ranging from 13 to 8,500 nodes, Penalty+SLFS achieves negligible optimality gaps and near-zero constraint violations, delivers up to three orders of magnitude speedups over IPOPT, and remains robust under large distributional shifts, demonstrating a viable path toward real-time, topology-aware AC-OPF for large-scale distribution grids.

Hoang T. Nguyen, Shaohui Liu, Reetam Sen Biswas +4

Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA. · GE Vernova Advanced Research Center, Niskayuna, NY, USA.

Neural Surrogate Modeling Self-Supervised Learning Optimal Power Flow Power Systems

Aug 13, 2026cs.LG

Virtual Temperature Sensors in Power Transformers Using Neural Ordinary Differential Equations

Accurate modeling and forecasting of power transformer thermal behavior are critical for reliability, asset lifetime, and optimized power system operation. Numerical approaches such as finite element methods (FEM) and computational fluid dynamics (CFD) offer high fidelity but are computationally expensive, require complex mesh generation, and are often impractical for real-time or large-scale applications, particularly when transformer geometries are unknown. Lumped-parameter thermal models are more practical but depend on transformer-specific thermal constants and may fail to capture dynamic responses under varying operating and environmental conditions. Purely data-driven machine learning methods, including artificial neural networks, convolutional neural networks, and long short-term memory (LSTM) networks, have shown success in forecasting transformer temperatures but typically require large volumes of high-quality training data and may produce physically inconsistent or uninterpretable results. This paper develops a physics-aware Neural Ordinary Differential Equation (Neural ODE) framework for forecasting transformer thermal behavior from real-world time-series data. Neural ODEs model system dynamics in continuous time, providing smooth trajectory prediction and a natural representation of continuously evolving thermal dynamics. A key contribution is the integration of simplified heat-transfer equations directly into the Neural ODE formulation. The model is evaluated across datasets from fifteen transformers in different regions of Norway with varying designs and cooling mechanisms. The results demonstrate that the developed Neural ODE framework provides a standardized, physics-aware, and robust forecasting approach for heterogeneous transformer units.

Berk Hadzhamolla, Alexander Johannes Stasik, Signe Riemer-Sørensen

University of Oslo, Oslo, 0316, Norway · 2,3 SINTEF AS, Department of Mathematics and Cybernetics, Oslo, Norway · Department of Data Science, Norwegian University of Life Sciences, ˚As, Norway

Physics-Informed ML Neural ODEs Virtual Sensing Power Systems