Power Systems

Follow this topic Ask about this topic

Power systems research examines how to generate, move, and use electricity reliably as grids incorporate renewables, storage, and flexible loads. It combines physical models and optimization with machine learning, including graph neural networks for grid structure, physics-informed models for power flow, and reinforcement learning for control and dispatch. Current work also uses forecasting and data-driven methods for fault detection, cybersecurity, outage response, and coordination between grids and large computing loads. A central challenge is making these tools generalize across changing networks and operating conditions while preserving physical feasibility, safety, and dependable performance in real-time deployment.

Latest papers

232 papers20 papers in the last four weeks, down 39% on the four weeks before. 0.1% of all new papers.

Apr 13, 2026

Accelerating Reinforcement Learning for Wind Farm Control via Expert Demonstrations

Reinforcement learning (RL) offers a promising approach for adaptive wind farm flow control, yet its practical deployment is hindered by slow training convergence and poor initial performance, factors that could translate to years of reduced power output if an untrained agent were deployed directly. This work investigates whether domain knowledge from steady-state wake models can accelerate RL training and improve initial controller performance. We propose a pretraining methodology in which expert demonstrations are generated by deploying a PyWake-based steady-state optimizer within a dynamic wake simulation (WindGym), then used to initialize both the actor and critic networks of a Soft Actor-Critic agent via behavior cloning. Experiments on a 2x2 wind farm show that pretraining eliminates the costly initial learning phase: while an untrained agent underperforms the greedy zero-yaw baseline by approximately 12%, pretraining raises initial performance to near-baseline levels. During online fine-tuning, all configurations converge within 250,000 environment steps to achieve similar performance, ultimately exceeding that of a lookup-table controller, which reaches approximately 7% power gain after 500,000 steps.

Marcus Binder Nilsen, Julian Quick, Tuhfe Göçmen +2

Department of Wind and Energy Systems, Technical University of Denmark, Roskilde, Denmark

RL Control Offline-To-Online RL Power Systems

Apr 12, 2026

Mapping High-Performance Regions in Battery Scheduling across Data Uncertainty, Battery Design, and Planning Horizons

This study presents a controlled parametric framework for analyzing energy storage planning under uncertainty in a multi-stage model predictive control setting. The framework enables a broad and systematic exploration through parametrized generation of synthetic datasets in the context of energy price arbitrage. It facilitates the study of the joint effects of battery characteristics, signal structure, forecast uncertainty, and planning horizon on revenue performance in energy storage optimization, which are rarely considered together. The analysis is driven by two objectives. First, it characterizes how these interacting factors influence operational revenue and its sensitivity to planning horizon selection, including economic losses caused by deviations from optimal horizons. This provides guidance on expected horizon ranges and their impact on revenue and computational cost. Second, it enables a compact parametrization of the relationships between battery properties, data characteristics, forecast uncertainty, and horizon-dependent performance, providing a basis for future modelling of optimal planning horizon length. Results show that the framework captures consistent structural dependencies across configurations and provides meaningful guidance for horizon selection under uncertainty. In particular, increasing forecast uncertainty systematically reduces the optimal planning horizon across battery types, reflecting the diminishing value of long-term information under increasingly unreliable forecasts. Comparison with real market data shows that the parametrization reproduces the main qualitative trends of optimal horizon behavior, suggesting its potential as a lightweight surrogate for more complex simulation-based analysis.

Jaime de Miguel Rodriguez, Artjom Vargunin, Brigitta Robin Raudne +3

Enefit, Estonia · University of Seville, Spain · University of Tartu, Estonia +1

Power Systems Decision-Making under Uncertainty Model Predictive Control

Apr 11, 2026

Agentic Application in Power Grid Static Analysis: Automatic Code Generation and Error Correction

This paper introduces an LLM agent that automates power grid static analysis by converting natural language into MATPOWER scripts. The framework utilizes DeepSeek-OCR to build an enhanced vector database from MATPOWER manuals. To ensure reliability, it devises a three-tier error-correction system: a static pre-check, a dynamic feedback loop, and a semantic validator. Operating via the Model Context Protocol, the tool enables asynchronous execution and automatically debugging in MATLAB. Experimental results demonstrate that the system achieves a 82.38% accuracy regarding the code fidelity, effectively eliminating hallucinations even in complex analysis tasks.

Qinjuan Wang, Shan Yang, Yongli Zhu

Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, China

Agentic Code Generation LLM-Based Program Synthesis Power Systems LLM Self-Correction

Apr 10, 2026

Multi-agent Reinforcement Learning for Low-Carbon P2P Energy Trading among Self-Interested Microgrids

Uncertainties in renewable generation and demand dynamics challenge day-ahead scheduling. To enhance renewable penetration and maintain intra-day balance, we develop a multi-agent reinforcement learning framework for self-interested microgrids participating in peer-to-peer (P2P) electricity trading. Each microgrid independently bids both price and quantity while optimizing its own profit via storage arbitrage under time-varying main-grid prices. A market-clearing mechanism coordinating trades and promoting incentive compatibility is proposed. Simulation results show that the learned bidding policy improves renewable utilization and reduces reliance on high-carbon electricity, while increasing community-level economic welfare, delivering a win-win situation in emission reduction and local prosperity.

Junhao Ren, Honglin Gao, Lan Zhao +3

School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore · School of Information Science and Technology, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, China · Singapore Institute of Manufacturing Technology, Agency for Science, Technology and Research, Singapore

Power Systems Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning Multi-Agent Negotiation

Apr 7, 2026

Bridging Natural Language and Microgrid Dynamics: A Context-Aware Simulator and Dataset

Addressing the critical need for intelligent, context-aware energy management in renewable systems, we introduce the OpenCEM Simulator and Dataset: the first open-source digital twin explicitly designed to integrate rich, unstructured contextual information with quantitative renewable energy dynamics. Traditional energy management relies heavily on numerical time series, thereby neglecting the significant predictive power embedded in human-generated context (e.g., event schedules, system logs, user intentions). OpenCEM bridges this gap by offering a unique platform comprising both a meticulously aligned, language-rich dataset from a real-world PV-and-battery microgrid installation and a modular simulator capable of natively processing this multi-modal context. The OpenCEM Simulator provides a high-fidelity environment for developing and validating novel control algorithms and prediction models, particularly those leveraging Large Language Models. We detail its component-based architecture, hybrid data-driven and physics-based modelling capabilities, and demonstrate its utility through practical examples, including context-aware load forecasting and the implementation of online optimal battery charging control strategies. By making this platform publicly available, OpenCEM aims to accelerate research into the next generation of intelligent, sustainable, and truly context-aware energy systems.

Tinko Sebastian Bartels, Ruixiang Wu, Xinyu Lu +5

School of Data Science, The Chinese University of Hong Kong-Shenzhen, Shenzhen, China. · Department of Mechanical and Automation Engineering, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China.

Power Systems Digital Twins

Apr 6, 2026

Empowering Power Outage Prediction with Spatially Aware Hybrid Graph Neural Networks and Contrastive Learning

Extreme weather events, such as severe storms, hurricanes, snowstorms, and ice storms, which are exacerbated by climate change, frequently cause widespread power outages. These outages halt industrial operations, impact communities, damage critical infrastructure, profoundly disrupt economies, and have far-reaching effects across various sectors. To mitigate these effects, the University of Connecticut and Eversource Energy Center have developed an outage prediction modeling (OPM) system to provide pre-emptive forecasts for electric distribution networks before such weather events occur. However, existing predictive models in the system do not incorporate the spatial effect of extreme weather events. To this end, we develop Spatially Aware Hybrid Graph Neural Networks (SA-HGNN) with contrastive learning to enhance the OPM predictions for extreme weather-induced power outages. Specifically, we first encode spatial relationships of both static features (e.g., land cover, infrastructure) and event-specific dynamic features (e.g., wind speed, precipitation) via Spatially Aware Hybrid Graph Neural Networks (SA-HGNN). Next, we leverage contrastive learning to handle the imbalance problem associated with different types of extreme weather events and generate location-specific embeddings by minimizing intra-event distances between similar locations while maximizing inter-event distances across all locations. Thorough empirical studies in four utility service territories, i.e., Connecticut, Western Massachusetts, Eastern Massachusetts, and New Hampshire, demonstrate that SA-HGNN can achieve state-of-the-art performance for power outage prediction.

Xuyang Shen, Zijie Pan, Diego Cerrai +4

University of Connecticut · Western Connecticut State University · Eversource Energy

Power Systems Graph Neural Networks

Apr 3, 2026

Learning Without Adversarial Training: A Physics-Informed Neural Network for Secure Power System State Estimation under False Data Injection Attacks

Power System State Estimation (PSSE) converts geographically distributed measurements into the voltage magnitudes and phase angles needed for grid monitoring and control. Learned estimators can perform this mapping rapidly, but model-aware False Data Injection Attacks (FDIAs) may corrupt their inputs while retaining AC plausibility and residual-based stealth. Physics-Informed Neural Networks (PINNs) limit candidate states through power-flow consistency; however, their robustness depends on balancing supervised and physics losses whose scales and gradient contributions evolve during training. This paper proposes a PINN that jointly learns homoscedastic uncertainty parameters and uses them to adapt the two objectives. The formulation assigns trainable log-uncertainties to the active-power, reactive-power, voltage, and angle losses while safeguarding against an underweighted physics objective. The estimator is trained only on clean steady-state data and is evaluated, without adversarial retraining, under baseline state-distortion and stricter residual-profile-matching regimes on the IEEE~118-bus system. Accuracy is measured against the uncompromised system state. Relative to a fixed-weight PINN, dynamic weighting reduces overall Mean Absolute Error (MAE) by

55\%

while also improving voltage- and angle-estimation accuracy. The results show that learning the physics/data balance from clean data improves robustness to unseen FDIAs.

Solon Falas, Markos Asprou, Charalambos Konstantinou +1

KIOS Center of Excellence, University of Cyprus · CEMSE, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) · Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Cyprus

False Data Injection Attacks Adversarial Robustness Physics-Informed ML Power Systems

Apr 3, 2026

Towards Intelligent Energy Security: A Unified Spatio-Temporal and Graph Learning Framework for Scalable Electricity Theft Detection in Smart Grids

Electricity theft and non-technical losses (NTLs) remain critical challenges in modern smart grids, causing significant economic losses and compromising grid reliability. This study introduces the SmartGuard Energy Intelligence System (SGEIS), an integrated artificial intelligence framework for electricity theft detection and intelligent energy monitoring. The proposed system combines supervised machine learning, deep learning-based time-series modeling, Non-Intrusive Load Monitoring (NILM), and graph-based learning to capture both temporal and spatial consumption patterns. A comprehensive data processing pipeline is developed, incorporating feature engineering, multi-scale temporal analysis, and rule-based anomaly labeling. Deep learning models, including Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM), Temporal Convolutional Networks (TCN), and Autoencoders, are employed to detect abnormal usage patterns. In parallel, ensemble learning methods such as Random Forest, Gradient Boosting, XGBoost, and LightGBM are utilized for classification. To model grid topology and spatial dependencies, Graph Neural Networks (GNNs) are applied to identify correlated anomalies across interconnected nodes. The NILM module enhances interpretability by disaggregating appliance-level consumption from aggregate signals. Experimental results demonstrate strong performance, with Gradient Boosting achieving a ROC-AUC of 0.894, while graph-based models attain over 96% accuracy in identifying high-risk nodes. The hybrid framework improves detection robustness by integrating temporal, statistical, and spatial intelligence. Overall, SGEIS provides a scalable and practical solution for electricity theft detection, offering high accuracy, improved interpretability, and strong potential for real-world smart grid deployment.

AbdulQoyum A. Olowookere, Usman A. Oguntola, Ebenezer. Leke Odekanle +2

Department of Chemical and Petroleum Engineering, Abiola Ajimobi Technical University, Ibadan, Oyo State, Nigeria. · Department of Computer Science, Abiola Ajimobi Technical University, Ibadan, Oyo State, Nigeria

Power Systems Anomaly Detection Time-Series Anomaly Detection

Apr 3, 2026

Structure-Aware Commitment Reduction for Network-Constrained Unit Commitment with Solver-Preserving Guarantees

The growing number of individual generating units, hybrid resources, and security constraints has significantly increased the computational burden of network-constrained unit commitment (UC), where most solution time is spent exploring branch-and-bound trees over unit-hour binary variables. To reduce this combinatorial burden, recent approaches have explored learning-based guidance to assist commitment decisions. However, directly using tools such as large language models (LLMs) to predict full commitment schedules is unreliable, as infeasible or inconsistent binary decisions can violate inter-temporal constraints and degrade economic optimality. This paper proposes a solver-compatible dimensionality reduction framework for UC that exploits structural regularities in commitment decisions. Instead of generating complete schedules, the framework identifies a sparse subset of structurally stable commitment binaries to fix prior to optimization. One implementation uses an LLM to select these variables. The LLM does not replace the optimization process but provides partial variable restriction, while all constraints and remaining decisions are handled by the original MILP solver, which continues to enforce network, ramping, reserve, and security constraints. We formally show that the masked problem defines a reduced feasible region of the original UC model, thereby preserving feasibility and enabling solver-certified optimality within the restricted space. Experiments on IEEE 57-bus, RTS 73-bus, IEEE 118-bus, and augmented large-scale cases, including security-constrained variants, demonstrate consistent reductions in branch-and-bound nodes and solution time, achieving order-of-magnitude speedups on high-complexity instances while maintaining near-optimal objective values.

Guangwen Wang, Jiaqi Wu, Yang Weng +1

School of Electrical, Computer and Energy Engineering, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ · Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Washington, Seattle, WA

Power Systems Mixed-Integer Linear Programming Large Language Model-Guided Optimization

Apr 3, 2026

Multi-agent Reinforcement Learning-based Joint Design of Low-Carbon P2P Market and Bidding Strategy in Microgrids

The challenges of the uncertainties in renewable energy generation and the instability of the real-time market limit the effective utilization of clean energy in microgrid communities. Existing peer-to-peer (P2P) and microgrid coordination approaches typically rely on certain centralized optimization or restrictive coordination rules which are difficult to be implemented in real-life applications. To address the challenge, we propose an intraday P2P trading framework that allows self-interested microgrids to pursue their economic benefits, while allowing the market operator to maximize the social welfare, namely the low carbon emission objective, of the entire community. Specifically, the decision-making processes of the microgrids are formulated as a Decentralized Partially Observable Markov Decision Process (DEC-POMDP) and solved using a Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning (MARL) framework. Such an approach grants each microgrid a high degree of decision-making autonomy, while a novel market clearing mechanism is introduced to provide macro-regulation, incentivizing microgrids to prioritize local renewable energy consumption and hence reduce carbon emissions. Simulation results demonstrate that the combination of the self-interested bidding strategy and the P2P market design helps significantly improve renewable energy utilization and reduce reliance on external electricity with high carbon-emissions. The framework achieves a balanced integration of local autonomy, self-interest pursuit, and improved community-level economic and environmental benefits.

Junhao Ren, Honglin Gao, Sijie Wang +5

School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, 639798, Singapore · School of Information Science and Technology, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, 230026, China · MOYA Analytics, 051912, Singapore +1

Apr 2, 2026

A Comprehensive Framework for Long-Term Resiliency Investment Planning under Extreme Weather Uncertainty for Electric Utilities

Electric utilities must make massive capital investments in the coming years to respond to explosive growth in demand, aging assets and rising threats from extreme weather. Utilities today already have rigorous frameworks for capital planning, and there are opportunities to extend this capability to solve multi-objective optimization problems in the face of uncertainty. This work presents a four-part framework that 1) incorporates extreme weather as a source of uncertainty, 2) leverages a digital twin of the grid, 3) uses Monte Carlo simulation to capture variability and 4) applies a multi-objective optimization method for finding the optimal investment portfolio. We use this framework to investigate whether grid-aware optimization methods outperform model-free approaches. We find that, in fact, given the computational complexity of model-based metaheuristic optimization methods, the simpler net present value ranking method was able to find more optimal portfolios with only limited knowledge of the grid.

Emma Benjaminson

Boston Consulting Group’s AI Science Institute, Pittsburgh, PA, USA

Power Systems Decision-Making under Uncertainty Multi-Objective Optimization

Apr 2, 2026

Physics Informed Reinforcement Learning with Gibbs Priors for Topology Control in Power Grids

Topology control for power grid operation is a challenging sequential decision making problem because the action space grows combinatorially with the size of the grid and action evaluation through simulation is computationally expensive. We propose a physics-informed Reinforcement Learning framework that combines semi-Markov control with a Gibbs prior, that encodes the system's physics, over the action space. The decision is only taken when the grid enters a hazardous regime, while a graph neural network surrogate predicts the post action overload risk of feasible topology actions. These predictions are used to construct a physics-informed Gibbs prior that both selects a small state-dependent candidate set and reweights policy logits before action selection. In this way, our method reduces exploration difficulty and online simulation cost while preserving the flexibility of a learned policy. We evaluate the approach in three realistic benchmark environments of increasing difficulty. Across all settings, the proposed method achieves a strong balance between control quality and computational efficiency: it matches oracle-level performance while being approximately

6\times

faster on the first benchmark, reaches

94.6\%

of oracle reward with roughly

200\times

lower decision time on the second one, and on the most challenging benchmark improves over a PPO baseline by up to

255\%

in reward and

284\%

in survived steps while remaining about

2.5\times

faster than a strong specialized engineering baseline. These results show that our method provides an effective mechanism for topology control in power grids.

Pantelis Dogoulis, Maxime Cordy

SerVal, SnT, University of Luxembourg, Luxembourg City, Luxembourg

RL Control Reinforcement Learning Power Systems Physics-Informed RL

Mar 31, 2026

Real-Time Surrogate Modeling for Fast Transient Prediction in Inverter-Based Microgrids Using CNN and LightGBM

Real-time monitoring of inverter-based microgrids is essential for stability, fault response, and operational decision-making. However, electromagnetic transient (EMT) simulations, required to capture fast inverter dynamics, are computationally intensive and unsuitable for real-time applications. This paper presents a data-driven surrogate modeling framework for fast prediction of microgrid behavior using convolutional neural networks (CNN) and Light Gradient Boosting Machine (LightGBM). The models are trained on a high-fidelity EMT digital twin dataset of a microgrid with ten distributed generators under eleven operating and disturbance scenarios, including faults, noise, and communication delays. A sliding-window method is applied to predict important system variables, including voltage magnitude, frequency, total active power, and voltage dip. The results show that model performance changes depending on the type of variable being predicted. The CNN demonstrates high accuracy for time-dependent signals such as voltage, with an

R^2

value of 0.84, whereas LightGBM shows better performance for structured and disturbance-related variables, achieving an

R^2

of 0.999 for frequency and 0.75 for voltage dip. A combined CNN+LightGBM model delivers stable performance across all variables. Beyond accuracy, the surrogate models also provide major improvements in computational efficiency. LightGBM achieves more than

1000\times

speedup and runs faster than real time, while the hybrid model achieves over

500\times

speedup with near real-time performance. These findings show that data-driven surrogate models can effectively represent microgrid dynamics. They also support real-time and faster-than-real-time predictions. As a result, they are well-suited for applications such as monitoring, fault analysis, and control in inverter-based power systems.

Osasumwen Cedric Ogiesoba-Eguakun, Kaveh Ashenayi, Suman Rath

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, The University of Tulsa, Tulsa, OK 74104, USA

Power Systems Neural Surrogate Modeling

Mar 30, 2026

Differentiable Power-Flow Optimization

With the rise of renewable energy sources and their high variability in generation, the management of power grids becomes increasingly complex and computationally demanding. Conventional AC-power-flow simulations, which use the Newton-Raphson (NR) method, suffer from poor scalability, making them impractical for emerging use cases such as joint transmission-distribution modeling and global grid analysis. At the same time, purely data-driven surrogate models lack physical guarantees and may violate fundamental constraints. In this work, we propose Differentiable Power-Flow (DPF), a reformulation of the AC power-flow problem as a differentiable simulation. DPF enables end-to-end gradient propagation from the physical power mismatches to the underlying simulation parameters, thereby allowing these parameters to be identified efficiently using gradient-based optimization. We demonstrate that DPF provides a scalable alternative to NR by leveraging GPU acceleration, sparse tensor representations, and batching capabilities available in modern machine-learning frameworks such as PyTorch. DPF is especially suited as a tool for time-series analyses due to its efficient reuse of previous solutions, for N-1 contingency-analyses due to its ability to process cases in batches, and as a screening tool by leveraging its speed and early stopping capability. The code is available in the authors' code repository.

Muhammed Öz, Jasmin Hörter, Kaleb Phipps +3

Power Systems Differentiable Programming

Mar 27, 2026

Characterization and forecasting of national-scale solar power ramp events

The rapid growth of solar energy is reshaping power system operations and increasing the complexity of grid management. As photovoltaic (PV) capacity expands, short-term fluctuations in PV generation introduce substantial operational uncertainty. At the same time, solar power ramp events intensify risks of grid instability and unplanned outages due to sudden large power fluctuations. Accurate identification, forecasting and mitigation of solar ramp events are therefore critical to maintaining grid stability. In this study, we analyze two years of PV power production from 6434 PV stations at 15-minute resolution. We develop quantitative metrics to define solar ramp events and systematically characterize their occurrence, frequency, and magnitude at a national scale. Furthermore, we examine the meteorological drivers of ramp events, highlighting the role of mesoscale cloud systems. In particular, we observe that ramp-up events are typically associated with cloud dissipation during the morning, while ramp-down events commonly occur when cloud cover increases in the afternoon. Additionally, we adopt a recently developed spatiotemporal forecasting framework to evaluate both deterministic and probabilistic PV power forecasts derived from deep learning and physics-based models, including SolarSTEPS, SHADECast, IrradianceNet, and IFS-ENS. The results show that SHADECast is the most reliable model, achieving a CRPS 10.8% lower than that of SolarSTEPS at a two-hour lead time. Nonetheless, state-of-the-art nowcasting models struggle to capture ramp dynamics, with forecast RMSE increasing by up to 50% compared to normal operating conditions. Overall, these results emphasize the need for improved high-resolution spatiotemporal modelling to enhance ramp prediction skill and support the reliable integration of large-scale solar generation into power systems.

Luca Lanzilao, Angela Meyer

School of Engineering and Computer Science, Bern University of Applied Sciences, Quellgasse 21, Biel, 2501, Bern, Switzerland · Department of Geosciences and Remote Sensing, TU Delft, Stevinweg 1, Delft, 2628 CN, South-Holland, The Netherlands

Solar Power Forecasting Power Systems Probabilistic Forecasting Spatiotemporal Forecasting

Mar 27, 2026

Topology-Aware Graph Reinforcement Learning for Energy Storage Systems Optimal Dispatch in Distribution Networks

Optimal dispatch of energy storage systems (ESSs) in distribution networks involves jointly improving operating economy and voltage security under time-varying conditions and possible topology changes. To support fast online decision making, we develop a topology-aware Reinforcement Learning architecture based on Twin Delayed Deep Deterministic Policy Gradient (TD3), which integrates graph neural networks (GNNs) as graph feature encoders for ESS dispatch. We conduct a systematic investigation of three GNN variants: graph convolutional networks (GCNs), topology adaptive graph convolutional networks (TAGConv), and graph attention networks (GATs) on the 34-bus and 69-bus systems, and evaluate robustness under multiple topology reconfiguration cases as well as cross-system transfer between networks with different system sizes. Results show that GNN-based controllers consistently reduce the number and magnitude of voltage violations, with clearer benefits on the 69-bus system and under reconfiguration; on the 69-bus system, TD3-GCN and TD3-TAGConv also achieve lower saved cost relative to the NLP benchmark than the NN baseline. We also highlight that transfer gains are case-dependent, and zero-shot transfer between fundamentally different systems results in notable performance degradation and increased voltage magnitude violations. This work is available at: https://github.com/ShuyiGao/GNNs_RL_ESSs and https://github.com/distributionnetworksTUDelft/GNNs_RL_ESSs.

Shuyi Gao, Stavros Orfanoudakis, Shengren Hou +2

Department of Electrical Sustainable Energy, Delft University of Technology, Mekelweg 4, Delft, 2628 CD, The Netherlands · Beijing Energy Quant Ltd., Haidian, Beijing, 53100, China

Power Systems RL Control Reinforcement Learning Graph Neural Networks Optimal Power Flow

Mar 27, 2026

Knowledge Distillation for Efficient Transformer-Based Reinforcement Learning in Hardware-Constrained Energy Management Systems

Transformer-based reinforcement learning has emerged as a strong candidate for sequential control in residential energy management. In particular, the Decision Transformer can learn effective battery dispatch policies from historical data, thereby increasing photovoltaic self-consumption and reducing electricity costs. However, transformer models are typically too computationally demanding for deployment on resource-constrained residential controllers, where memory and latency constraints are critical. This paper investigates knowledge distillation to transfer the decision-making behaviour of high-capacity Decision Transformer policies to compact models that are more suitable for embedded deployment. Using the Ausgrid dataset, we train teacher models in an offline sequence-based Decision Transformer framework on heterogeneous multi-building data. We then distil smaller student models by matching the teachers' actions, thereby preserving control quality while reducing model size. Across a broad set of teacher-student configurations, distillation largely preserves control performance and even yields small improvements of up to 1%, while reducing the parameter count by up to 96%, the inference memory by up to 90%, and the inference time by up to 63%. Beyond these compression effects, comparable cost improvements are also observed when distilling into a student model of identical architectural capacity. Overall, our results show that knowledge distillation makes Decision Transformer control more applicable for residential energy management on resource-limited hardware.

Pascal Henrich, Jonas Sievers, Maximilian Beichter +3

Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Karlsruhe, Germany

Policy Distillation Transformer-Based RL Knowledge Distillation Power Systems

Mar 27, 2026

AutoB2G: Agentic Simulation and Reinforcement Learning for Spatio-Temporal Grid-Interactive Building Control

Grid-interactive building control can improve demand-side flexibility, but realistic evaluation requires coordinated co-simulation of buildings, reinforcement learning (RL), and distribution grids. Translating user intent into executable co-simulation workflows is labor-intensive, requiring the manual integration and configuration of heterogeneous simulators and interfaces. We introduce AutoB2G, a grid-aware building--grid co-simulation environment integrating CityLearn V2 with Pandapower and OpenDSS. It supports balanced and three-phase unbalanced grid simulation and a broad range of grid-side evaluation metrics. AutoB2G organizes simulation components as a directed acyclic graph (DAG), explicitly encoding module dependencies and execution order for dependency-aware retrieval and composition. Building on this structure, we develop a large language model (LLM)-based agentic framework that automatically retrieves, composes, executes, verifies, and repairs simulation pipelines from natural-language task descriptions. Experiments on realistic distribution networks show improved reliability and executability of complex building--grid workflows, demonstrating the potential of agentic LLMs for scientific simulation orchestration in energy systems.

Borui Zhang, Nariman Mahdavi, Subbu Sethuvenkatraman +1

University of New South Wales Sydney, NSW, Australia · CSIRO Newcastle, NSW, Australia

LLM Agent Orchestration Power Systems

Mar 24, 2026

Safe Decentralized Operation of EV Virtual Power Plant with Limited Network Visibility via Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning

As power systems advance toward net-zero targets, behind-the-meter renewables are driving rapid growth in distributed energy resources (DERs). Virtual power plants (VPPs) increasingly coordinate these resources to support power distribution network (PDN) operation, with EV charging stations (EVCSs) emerging as a key asset due to their strong impact on local voltages. However, in practice, VPPs must make operational decisions with only partial visibility of PDN states, relying on limited, aggregated information shared by the distribution system operator. This work proposes a safety-enhanced VPP framework for coordinating multiple EVCSs under such realistic information constraints to ensure voltage security while maintaining economic operation. We develop Transformer-assisted Lagrangian Multi-Agent Proximal Policy Optimization (TL-MAPPO), in which EVCS agents learn decentralized charging policies via centralized training with Lagrangian regularization to enforce voltage and demand-satisfaction constraints. A transformer-based embedding layer deployed on each EVCS agent captures temporal correlations among prices, loads, and charging demand to improve decision quality. Experiments on a realistic 33-bus PDN show that the proposed framework reduces voltage violations by approximately 45% and operational costs by approximately 10% compared to representative multi-agent DRL baselines, highlighting its potential for practical VPP deployment.

Chenghao Huang, Jiarong Fan, Weiqing Wang +1

Department of Data Science and AI, Faculty of IT, Monash University, Australia · Monash Energy Institute, Monash University, Australia

Power Systems Decentralized MARL Electric Vehicle Charging Safe RL Partially Observable RL

Mar 23, 2026

BOOST-RPF: Boosted Sequential Trees for Radial Power Flow

Accurate power flow analysis is critical for modern distribution systems, yet classical solvers face scalability issues, and current machine learning models often struggle with generalization. We introduce BOOST-RPF, a novel method that reformulates voltage prediction from a global graph regression task into a sequential path-based learning problem. By decomposing radial networks into root-to-leaf paths, we leverage gradient-boosted decision trees (XGBoost) to model local voltage-drop regularities. We evaluate three architectural variants: Absolute Voltage, Parent Residual, and Physics-Informed Residual. This approach aligns the model architecture with the recursive physics of power flow, ensuring size-agnostic application and superior out-of-distribution robustness. Benchmarked against the Kerber Dorfnetz grid and the ENGAGE suite, BOOST-RPF achieves state-of-the-art results with its Parent Residual variant which consistently outperforms both analytical and neural baselines in standard accuracy and generalization tasks. While global Multi-Layer Perceptrons (MLPs) and Graph Neural Networks (GNNs) often suffer from performance degradation under topological shifts, BOOST-RPF maintains high precision across unseen feeders. Furthermore, the framework displays linear

O(N)

computational scaling and significantly increased sample efficiency through per-edge supervision, offering a scalable and generalizable alternative for real-time distribution system operator (DSO) applications.

Ehimare Okoyomon, Christoph Goebel

Professorship of Energy Management Technologies at the Technical University of Munich

Power Systems Surrogate Modeling OOD Generalization Neural Surrogate Modeling

Mar 21, 2026

Graph-based data-driven discovery of interpretable laws governing corona-induced noise and radio interference for high-voltage transmission lines

The global shift towards renewable energy necessitates the development of ultrahigh-voltage (UHV) AC transmission to bridge the gap between remote energy sources and urban demand. While UHV grids offer superior capacity and efficiency, their implementation is often hindered by corona-induced audible noise (AN) and radio interference (RI). Since these emissions must meet strict environmental compliance standards, accurate prediction is vital for the large-scale deployment of UHV infrastructure. Existing engineering practices often rely on empirical laws, in which fixed log-linear structures limit accuracy and extrapolation. Herein, we present a monotonicity-constrained graph symbolic discovery framework, Mono-GraphMD, which uncovers compact, interpretable laws for corona-induced AN and RI. The framework provides mechanistic insight into how nonlinear interactions among the surface gradient, bundle number and diameter govern high-field emissions and enables accurate predictions for both corona-cage data and multicountry real UHV lines with up to 16-bundle conductors. Unlike black-box models, the discovered closed-form laws are highly portable and interpretable, allowing for rapid predictions when applied to various scenarios, thereby facilitating the engineering design process.

Hao Xu, Yuntian Chen, Chongqing Kang +1

Zhejiang Key Laboratory of Industrial Intelligence and Digital Twin, Eastern Institute of Technology, Ningbo, Zhejiang 315200, China · Department of Electrical Engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, P. R. China · Ningbo Institute of Digital Twin, Eastern Institute of Technology, Ningbo, Zhejiang 315200, P. R. China +1

Power Systems Symbolic Regression

Mar 18, 2026

Verification and Validation of Physics-Informed Surrogate Component Models for Dynamic Power-System Simulation

Physics-informed machine learning surrogates are increasingly explored to accelerate dynamic simulation of generators, converters, and other power grid components. The key question, however, is not only whether a surrogate matches a stand-alone component model on average, but whether it remains accurate after insertion into a differential-algebraic simulator, where the surrogate outputs enter the algebraic equations coupling the component to the rest of the system. This paper formulates that in-simulator use as a verification and validation (V&V) problem. A finite-horizon bound is derived that links allowable component-output error to algebraic-coupling sensitivity, dynamic error amplification, and the simulation horizon. Two complementary settings are then studied: model-based verification against a reference component solver, and data-based validation through conformal calibration of the component-output variables exchanged with the simulator. The framework is general, but the case study focuses on physics-informed neural-network surrogates of second-, fourth-, and sixth-order synchronous-machine models. Results show that good stand-alone surrogate accuracy does not by itself guarantee accurate in-simulator behavior, that the largest discrepancies concentrate in stressed operating regions, and that small equation residuals do not necessarily imply small state-trajectory errors.

Petros Ellinas, Indrajit Chaudhuri, Johanna Vorwerk +1

Department of Wind and Energy Systems, Technical University of Denmark (DTU), Kgs. Lyngby, Denmark.

Surrogate Modeling Power Systems Physics-Informed ML Neural Surrogate Modeling

Mar 16, 2026

A Lightweight, Transferable, and Self-Adaptive Framework for Intelligent DC Arc-Fault Detection in Photovoltaic Systems

Arc-fault circuit interrupters (AFCIs) are essential for mitigating fire hazards in residential photovoltaic (PV) systems, yet achieving reliable DC arc-fault detection under real-world conditions remains challenging. Spectral interference from inverter switching, hardware heterogeneity, operating-condition drift, and environmental noise collectively compromise conventional AFCI solutions. This paper proposes a lightweight, transferable, and self-adaptive learning-driven framework (LD-framework) for intelligent DC arc-fault detection. At the device level, LD-Spec learns compact spectral representations enabling efficient on-device inference and near-perfect arc discrimination. Across heterogeneous inverter platforms, LD-Align performs cross-hardware representation alignment to ensure robust detection despite hardware-induced distribution shifts. To address long-term evolution, LD-Adapt introduces a cloud-edge collaborative self-adaptive updating mechanism that detects unseen operating regimes and performs controlled model evolution. Extensive experiments involving over 53,000 labeled samples demonstrate near-perfect detection, achieving 0.9999 accuracy and 0.9996 F1-score. Across diverse nuisance-trip-prone conditions, including inverter start-up, grid transitions, load switching, and harmonic disturbances, the method achieves a 0% false-trip rate. Cross-hardware transfer shows reliable adaptation using only 0.5%-1% labeled target data while preserving source performance. Field adaptation experiments demonstrate recovery of detection precision from 21% to 95% under previously unseen conditions. These results indicate that the LD-framework enables a scalable, deployment-oriented AFCI solution maintaining highly reliable detection across heterogeneous devices and long-term operation.

Xiaoke Yang, Long Gao, Haoyu He +5

EcoFlow Inc, Shenzhen, China. · AAU Energy, Aalborg University, Denmark

Fault Detection Power Systems Domain Adaptation Transfer Learning Continual Learning

Mar 14, 2026

Gated Graph Attention Networks for Predicting Duration of Large Scale Power Outages Induced by Natural Disasters

The occurrence of large-scale power outages induced by natural disasters has been on the rise in a changing climate. Such power outages often last extended durations, causing substantial financial losses and socioeconomic impacts to customers. Accurate estimation of outage duration is thus critical for enhancing the resilience of energy infrastructure under severe weather. We formulate such a task as a machine learning (ML) problem with focus on unique real-world challenges: high-order spatial dependency in the data, a moderate number of large-scale outage events, heterogeneous types of such events, and different impacts in a region within each event. To address these challenges, we develop a Bimodal Gated Graph Attention Network (BiGGAT), a graph-based neural network model, that integrates a Graph Attention Network (GAT) with a Gated Recurrent Unit (GRU) to capture the complex spatial characteristics. We evaluate the approach in a setting of inductive learning, using large-scale power outage data from six major hurricanes in the Southeastern United States. Experimental results demonstrate that BiGGAT achieves a superior performance compared to benchmark models.

Chenghao Duan, Chuanyi Ji, Anwar Walid +1

School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA, USA · Department of Electrical Engineering, Columbia University, New York, NY, USA · School of Business, University of California, Riverside, Riverside, CA, USA

Power Systems Graph Attention Networks Time Series Forecasting

Mar 13, 2026

From AI Weather Prediction to Infrastructure Resilience: A Real-Time Correction-Downscaling Framework for Tropical Cyclone Impact Forecasting

This paper addresses a missing capability in infrastructure resilience: turning fast, global AI weather forecasts into asset-scale, actionable risk intelligence. We introduce the AI-based Correction-Downscaling Framework (ACDF), which combines real-time bias correction, terrain-informed downscaling, and fragility-based power transmission system risk assessment for tropical cyclone impacts. ACDF separates storm-scale bias correction from terrain-aware refinement, mitigating error propagation while restoring the sub-kilometer wind variability that governs structural loading. Tested on 11 typhoons affecting Zhejiang, China under leave-one-storm-out evaluation, ACDF produces 500 m wind fields over a province-scale domain, reduces station-scale wind-speed MAE by 38.8% relative to Pangu-Weather, and runs in approximately 25 s per 12-h cycle on a single GPU. In the Typhoon Hagupit case, ACDF reproduced observed high-wind tails, identified a coastal high-risk corridor, and flagged the transmission line that subsequently failed, demonstrating actionable guidance at tower and line scales. ACDF provides an end-to-end pathway from global AI weather forecasts to operational, impact-based early warning for critical infrastructure.

You Wu, Zhenguo Wang, Naiyu Wang

College of Civil Engineering and Architecture, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310058, China · State Grid Zhejiang Electric Power Co., LTD. Electric power Research Institute China

Weather Forecasting Climate Downscaling Power Systems

Mar 13, 2026

Concentrated siting of AI data centers drives regional power-system stress under rising global compute demand

The rapid rise of generative artificial intelligence (AI) is driving unprecedented growth in global computational demand, placing increasing pressure on electricity systems. This study introduces an AI-energy coupling framework that combines large language models (LLMs)-based analysis of corporate, policy, and media data with quantitative energy-system modeling to forecast the electricity footprint of AI-driven data centers from 2025 to 2030. Results show that the new AI infrastructure is highly concentrated in North America, Western Europe, and the Asia-Pacific, which together account for more than 90% of projected compute capacity. Aggregate electricity consumption by the six leading firms is projected to increase from roughly 118 TWh in 2024 to between 239 TWh and 295 TWh by 2030, equivalent to about 1% of global power demand. Regions such as Oregon, Virginia, and Ireland may experience high Power Stress Index (PSI) values exceeding 0.25, indicating local grid vulnerability, whereas diversified systems such as those in Texas and Japan can absorb new loads more effectively. These findings demonstrate that AI infrastructure is evolving from a marginal digital service into a structural component of power-system dynamics, underscoring the need for anticipatory planning that aligns computational growth with renewable expansion and grid resilience.

Danbo Chen, Zijun Zhou, Yongyang Cai +3

The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH 43210, USA. · Meta Platforms Inc., Menlo Park, CA 94025, USA. · Zhejiang A&F University, Hangzhou, Zhejiang 311300, China.

Power Systems Electricity Load Forecasting

Mar 8, 2026

Reinforcement learning-based dynamic cleaning scheduling framework for solar energy system

Advancing autonomous green technologies in solar photovoltaic (PV) systems is key to improving sustainability and efficiency in renewable energy production. This study presents a reinforcement learning (RL)-based framework to autonomously optimize the cleaning schedules of PV panels in arid regions, where soiling from dust and other airborne particles significantly reduces energy output. By employing advanced RL algorithms, Proximal Policy Optimization (PPO) and Soft Actor-Critic (SAC), the framework dynamically adjusts cleaning intervals based on uncertain environmental conditions. The proposed approach was applied to a case study in Abu Dhabi, UAE, demonstrating that PPO outperformed SAC and traditional simulation optimization (Sim-Opt) methods, achieving up to 13% cost savings by dynamically responding to weather uncertainties. The results highlight the superiority of flexible, autonomous scheduling over fixed-interval methods, particularly in adapting to stochastic environmental dynamics. This aligns with the goals of autonomous green energy production by reducing operational costs and improving the efficiency of solar power generation systems. This work underscores the potential of RL-driven autonomous decision-making to optimize maintenance operations in renewable energy systems. In future research, it is important to enhance the generalization ability of the proposed RL model, while also considering additional factors and constraints to apply it to different regions.

Heungjo An

Department of Industrial Engineering, Kumoh National Institute of Technology, Gumi City, South Korea

RL Control Power Systems

Mar 7, 2026

Topology-Aware Reinforcement Learning over Graphs for Resilient Power Distribution Networks

Extreme weather events and cyberattacks can cause component failures and disrupt the operation of power distribution networks (DNs), during which reconfiguration and load shedding are often adopted for resilience enhancement. This study introduces a topology-aware graph reinforcement learning (RL) framework for outage management that embeds higher-order topological features of the DN into a graph-based RL model, enabling reconfiguration and load shedding to maximize energy supply while maintaining operational stability. Results on the modified IEEE 123-bus feeder across 300 diverse outage scenarios demonstrate that incorporating the topological data analysis (TDA) tool, persistence homology (PH), yields 9-18% higher cumulative rewards, up to 6% increase in power delivery, and 6-8% fewer voltage violations compared to a baseline graph-RL model. These findings highlight the potential of integrating RL with TDA to enable self-healing in DNs, facilitating fast, adaptive, and automated restoration.

Roshni Anna Jacob, Prithvi Poddar, Jaidev Goel +3

The University of Texas at Dallas, Richardson, TX, USA · University at Buffalo, Buffalo, NY, USA · Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA, USA

Power Systems Reinforcement Learning

Mar 5, 2026

Reinforcement Learning for Power-Flow Network Analysis

The power flow equations are non-linear multivariate equations that describe the relationship between power injections and bus voltages of electric power networks. Given a network topology, we are interested in finding network parameters with many equilibrium points. This corresponds to finding instances of the power flow equations with many real solutions. Current state-of-the art algorithms in computational algebra are not capable of answering this question for networks involving more than a small number of variables. To remedy this, we design a probabilistic reward function that gives a good approximation to this root count, and a state-space that mimics the space of power flow equations. We derive the average root count for a Gaussian model, and use this as a baseline for our RL agents. The agents discover instances of the power flow equations with many more solutions than the average baseline. This demonstrates the potential of RL for power-flow network design and analysis as well as the potential for RL to contribute meaningfully to problems that involve complex non-linear algebra or geometry. \footnote{Author order alphabetic, all authors contributed equally.

Alperen Ergur, Julia Lindberg, Vinny Miller

The University of Texas at San Antonio, Mathematics and Computer Science Departments · Georgia Tech, Mathematics Department · The University of Texas at San Antonio, Computer Science Department

Power Systems Reinforcement Learning

Feb 27, 2026

FaultXformer: A Transformer-Encoder Based Fault Classification and Location Identification model in PMU-Integrated Active Electrical Distribution System

Accurate fault detection and localization in electrical distribution systems is crucial, especially with the increasing integration of distributed energy resources (DERs), which inject greater variability and complexity into grid operations. In this study, FaultXformer is proposed, a Transformer encoder-based architecture developed for automatic fault analysis using real-time current data obtained from phasor measurement unit (PMU). The approach utilizes time-series current data to initially extract rich temporal information in stage 1, which is crucial for identifying the fault type and precisely determining its location across multiple nodes. In Stage 2, these extracted features are processed to differentiate among distinct fault types and identify the respective fault location within the distribution system. Thus, this dual-stage transformer encoder pipeline enables high-fidelity representation learning, considerably boosting the performance of the work. The model was validated on a dataset generated from the IEEE 13-node test feeder, simulated with 20 separate fault locations and several DER integration scenarios, utilizing current measurements from four strategically located PMUs. To demonstrate robust performance evaluation, stratified 10-fold cross-validation is performed. FaultXformer achieved average accuracies of 98.76% in fault type classification and 98.92% in fault location identification across cross-validation, consistently surpassing conventional deep learning baselines convolutional neural network (CNN), recurrent neural network (RNN). long short-term memory (LSTM) by 1.70%, 34.95%, and 2.04% in classification accuracy and by 10.82%, 40.89%, and 6.27% in location accuracy, respectively. These results demonstrate the efficacy of the proposed model with significant DER penetration.

Kriti Thakur, Alivelu Manga Parimi, Mayukha Pal

ABB Ability Innovation Center, Asea Brown Boveri Company, Hyderabad, 500084, Telangana, India · Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering, Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani- Hyderabad Campus, Hyderabad, 500078, Telangana, India

Power System Fault Diagnosis Fault Localization Fault Diagnosis Power Systems Time Series Transformers