Power Systems

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Overview

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

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

Feb 25, 2026

Two-Stage Active Distribution Network Voltage Control via LLM-RL Collaboration: A Hybrid Knowledge-Data-Driven Approach

The growing integration of distributed photovoltaics (PVs) into active distribution networks (ADNs) has exacerbated operational challenges, making it imperative to coordinate diverse equipment to mitigate voltage violations and enhance power quality. Although existing data-driven approaches have demonstrated effectiveness in the voltage control problem, they often require extensive trial-and-error exploration and struggle to incorporate heterogeneous information, such as day-ahead forecasts and semantic-based grid codes. Considering the operational scenarios and requirements in real-world ADNs, in this paper, we propose a hybrid knowledge-data-driven approach that leverages dynamic collaboration between a large language model (LLM) agent and a reinforcement learning (RL) agent to achieve two-stage voltage control. In the day-ahead stage, the LLM agent receives coarse region-level forecasts and generates scheduling strategies for on-load tap changer (OLTC) and shunt capacitors (SCs) to regulate the overall voltage profile. Then in the intra-day stage, based on accurate node-level measurements, the RL agent refines terminal voltages by deriving reactive power generation strategies for PV inverters. On top of the LLM-RL collaboration framework, we further propose a self-evolution mechanism for the LLM agent and a pretrain-finetune pipeline for the RL agent, effectively enhancing and coordinating the policies for both agents. The proposed approach not only aligns more closely with practical operational characteristics but also effectively utilizes the inherent knowledge and reasoning capabilities of the LLM agent, significantly improving training efficiency and voltage control performance. Comprehensive comparisons and ablation studies demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.

Xu Yang, Chenhui Lin, Xiang Ma +4

Sichuan Energy Internet Research Institute, Tsinghua University, Chengdu 610213, China. · State Grid Zhejiang Electric Power Co., Ltd., Jinhua Power Supply Company, Jinhua 321017, China.

Power SystemsRL ControlLanguage Model-Based Control
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Feb 24, 2026

PowerModelsGAT-AI: Physics-Informed Graph Attention for Multi-System Power Flow with Continual Learning

Solving the alternating current power flow equations in real time is essential for secure grid operation, yet classical Newton-Raphson solvers can be slow under stressed conditions. Existing graph neural networks for power flow are typically trained on a single system and often degrade on different systems. We present PowerModelsGAT-AI, a physics-informed graph attention network that predicts bus voltages and generator injections. The model uses bus-type-aware masking to handle different bus types and balances multiple loss terms, including a power-mismatch penalty, using learned weights. We evaluate the model on 14 benchmark systems (4 to 6,470 buses) and train a unified model on 13 of these under N-2 (two-branch outage) conditions, achieving an average normalized mean absolute error of 0.89% for voltage magnitudes and R^2 > 0.99 for voltage angles. We also show continual learning: when adapting a base model to a new 1,354-bus system, standard fine-tuning causes severe forgetting with error increases exceeding 1000% on base systems, while our experience replay and elastic weight consolidation strategy keeps error increases below 2% and in some cases improves base-system performance. Interpretability analysis shows that learned attention weights correlate with physical branch parameters (susceptance: r = 0.38; thermal limits: r = 0.22), and feature importance analysis supports that the model captures established power flow relationships.

Chidozie Ezeakunne, Jose E. Tabarez, Reeju Pokharel +1

Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, NM, USA · Department of Physics, University of Central Florida, Orlando, FL 32816 USA

Physics-Informed GNNsPower SystemsNeural Surrogate ModelingGraph Attention NetworksContinual Learning
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Feb 23, 2026

An LLM-Enabled Frequency-Aware Flow Diffusion Model for Natural-Language-Guided Power System Scenario Generation

Diverse and controllable scenario generation (e.g., wind, solar, load, etc.) is critical for robust power system planning and operation. As AI-based scenario generation methods are becoming the mainstream, existing methods (e.g., Conditional Generative Adversarial Nets) mainly rely on a fixed-length numerical conditioning vector to control the generation results, facing challenges in user conveniency and generation flexibility. In this paper, a natural-language-guided scenario generation framework, named LLM-enabled Frequency-aware Flow Diffusion (LFFD), is proposed to enable users to generate desired scenarios using plain human language. First, a pretrained LLM module is introduced to convert generation requests described by unstructured natural languages into ordered semantic space. Second, instead of using standard diffusion models, a flow diffusion model employing a rectified flow matching objective is introduced to achieve efficient and high-quality scenario generation, taking the LLM output as the model input. During the model training process, a frequency-aware multi-objective optimization algorithm is introduced to mitigate the frequency-bias issue. Meanwhile, a dual-agent framework is designed to create text-scenario training sample pairs as well as to standardize semantic evaluation. Experiments based on large-scale photovoltaic and load datasets demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.

Zhenghao Zhou, Yiyan Li, Fei Xie +5

College of Smart Energy, Shanghai Non-Carbon Energy Conversion and Utilization Institute, and Key Laboratory of Control of Power Transmission and Conversion, Ministry of Education, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, 200240, China. · Qinghai Photovoltaic Industry Innovation Center Co., Ltd., State Power Investment Corporation, Xining 810007, China. · Xinjiang Hami Co., Ltd., State Power Investment Corporation, Hami 839000, China. +1

Conditional Generative ModelingPower SystemsFlow-Based Generative Modeling
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Feb 20, 2026

Parameter-Efficient Domain Adaptation of Physics-Informed Self-Attention based GNNs for AC Power Flow Prediction

Accurate AC power flow (AC-PF) prediction under domain shift is critical when models trained on medium-voltage (MV) grids are deployed on high-voltage (HV) networks. Existing physics-informed graph neural network (GNN) solvers typically rely on full fine-tuning for cross-regime transfer, incurring high retraining cost and offering limited control over the stability-plasticity trade-off between target-domain adaptation and source-domain retention. We study parameter-efficient domain adaptation for physics-informed self-attention-based GNNs, encouraging Kirchhoff-consistent behavior via a physics-based loss while restricting adaptation to low-rank updates. Specifically, we apply low-rank adaptation (LoRA) to attention projections with selective unfreezing of the prediction head to regulate adaptation capacity. This design yields a controllable efficiency-accuracy trade-off for physics-constrained inverse estimation under voltage-regime shift. Across multiple grid topologies, the proposed LoRA+PHead adaptation recovers near-full fine-tuning accuracy with a target-domain RMSE gap of 2.6×10−42.6 \times 10^{-4} while reducing the number of trainable parameters by 85.46%85.46\%. The physics-based residual remains comparable to full fine-tuning; however, relative to Full FT, LoRA+PHead reduces MV source retention by 4.7 percentage points (17.9% vs. 22.6%) under domain shift, while still enabling parameter-efficient and physically consistent AC-PF estimation.

Redwanul Karim, Changhun Kim, Timon Conrad +7

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

Physics-Informed GNNsPower SystemsParameter-Efficient Fine-TuningLow-Rank Adaptation
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Feb 20, 2026

Deep Reinforcement Learning for Optimizing Energy Consumption in Smart Grid Systems

The energy management problem in the context of smart grids is inherently complex due to the interdependencies among diverse system components. Although Reinforcement Learning (RL) has been proposed for solving Optimal Power Flow (OPF) problems, the requirement for iterative interaction with an environment often necessitates computationally expensive simulators, leading to significant sample inefficiency. In this study, these challenges are addressed through the use of Physics-Informed Neural Networks (PINNs), which can replace conventional and costly smart grid simulators. The RL policy learning process is enhanced so that convergence can be achieved in a fraction of the time required by the original environment. The PINN-based surrogate is compared with other benchmark data-driven surrogate models. By incorporating knowledge of the underlying physical laws, the results show that the PINN surrogate is the only approach considered in this context that can obtain a strong RL policy even without access to samples from the true simulator. The results demonstrate that using PINN surrogates can accelerate training by 50% compared to RL training without a surrogate. This approach enables the rapid generation of performance scores similar to those produced by the original simulator.

Abeer Alsheikhi, Amirfarhad Farhadi, Azadeh Zamanifar

School of Computer Engineering, Iran university of Science and Technology, Tehran, Iran · Department of Computer Engineering, SR.C, Islamic Azad university, Tehran, Iran

Sample-Efficient RLPower SystemsPhysics-Informed RLOptimal Power FlowNeural Surrogate Modeling
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Feb 20, 2026

Generating adversarial inputs for a graph neural network model of AC power flow

This work formulates and solves optimization problems to generate input points that yield high errors between a neural network's predicted AC power flow solution and solutions to the AC power flow equations. We demonstrate this capability on an instance of the CANOS-PF graph neural network model, as implemented by the PFΔΔ benchmark library, operating on a 14-bus test grid. Generated adversarial points yield errors as large as 3.7 per-unit in reactive power and 0.08 per-unit in voltage magnitude. When minimizing the perturbation from a training point necessary to satisfy adversarial constraints, we find that the constraints can be met with as little as an 0.04 per-unit perturbation in voltage magnitude on a single bus. This work motivates the development of rigorous verification and robust training methods for neural network surrogate models of AC power flow.

Robert Parker

Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, NM, USA

Neural Surrogate ModelingGraph Neural NetworksAdversarial AttacksPower Systems
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Feb 17, 2026

MARLEM: A Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning Simulation Framework for Implicit Cooperation in Decentralized Local Energy Markets

This paper introduces a novel, open-source MARL simulation framework for studying implicit cooperation in LEMs, modeled as a decentralized partially observable Markov decision process and implemented as a Gymnasium environment for MARL. Our framework features a modular market platform with plug-and-play clearing mechanisms, physically constrained agent models (including battery storage), a realistic grid network, and a comprehensive analytics suite to evaluate emergent coordination. The main contribution is a novel method to foster implicit cooperation, where agents' observations and rewards are enhanced with system-level key performance indicators to enable them to independently learn strategies that benefit the entire system and aim for collectively beneficial outcomes without explicit communication. Through representative case studies (available in a dedicated GitHub repository in https://github.com/salazarna/marlem, we show the framework's ability to analyze how different market configurations (such as varying storage deployment) impact system performance. This illustrates its potential to facilitate emergent coordination, improve market efficiency, and strengthen grid stability. The proposed simulation framework is a flexible, extensible, and reproducible tool for researchers and practitioners to design, test, and validate strategies for future intelligent, decentralized energy systems.

Nelson Salazar-Pena, Alejandra Tabares, Andres Gonzalez-Mancera

Department of Mechanical Engineering, Universidad de los Andes, 111711, Bogotá D.C., Colombia · Department of Industrial Engineering, Universidad de los Andes, 111711, Bogotá D.C., Colombia

Multi-Agent CoordinationPower SystemsDecentralized MARLEmergent Behavior in Multi-Agent SystemsReward Shaping
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Feb 17, 2026

Harnessing Implicit Cooperation: A Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning Approach Towards Decentralized Local Energy Markets

This paper proposes implicit cooperation, a framework enabling decentralized agents to approximate optimal coordination in local energy markets without explicit peer-to-peer communication. We formulate the problem as a decentralized partially observable Markov decision problem that is solved through a multi-agent reinforcement learning task in which agents use stigmergic signals (key performance indicators at the system level) to infer and react to global states. Through a 3x3 factorial design on an IEEE 34-node topology, we evaluated three training paradigms (CTCE, CTDE, DTDE) and three algorithms (PPO, APPO, SAC). Results identify APPO-DTDE as the optimal configuration, achieving a coordination score of 91.7% relative to the theoretical centralized benchmark (CTCE). However, a critical trade-off emerges between efficiency and stability: while the centralized benchmark maximizes allocative efficiency with a peer-to-peer trade ratio of 0.6, the fully decentralized approach (DTDE) demonstrates superior physical stability. Specifically, DTDE reduces the variance of grid balance by 31% compared to hybrid architectures, establishing a highly predictable, import-biased load profile that simplifies grid regulation. Furthermore, topological analysis reveals emergent spatial clustering, where decentralized agents self-organize into stable trading communities to minimize congestion penalties. While SAC excelled in hybrid settings, it failed in decentralized environments due to entropy-driven instability. This research proves that stigmergic signaling provides sufficient context for complex grid coordination, offering a robust, privacy-preserving alternative to expensive centralized communication infrastructure.

Nelson Salazar-Pena, Alejandra Tabares, Andres Gonzalez-Mancera

Department of Mechanical Engineering, Universidad de los Andes, 111711, Bogotá D.C., Colombia · Department of Industrial Engineering, Universidad de los Andes, 111711, Bogotá D.C., Colombia

Multi-Agent CoordinationDecentralized MARLPower Systems
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Feb 17, 2026

Fine-Tuning LLMs to Generate Economical and Reliable Actions for the Power Grid

Public Safety Power Shutoffs (PSPS) force rapid topology changes that can render standard operating points infeasible, requiring operators to quickly identify corrective transmission switching actions that reduce load shedding while maintaining acceptable voltage behavior. We present a verifiable, multi-stage adaptation pipeline that fine-tunes an instruction-tuned large language model (LLM) to generate open-only corrective switching plans from compact PSPS scenario summaries under an explicit switching budget. First, supervised fine-tuning distills a DC-OPF MILP oracle into a constrained action grammar that enables reliable parsing and feasibility checks. Second, direct preference optimization refines the policy using AC-evaluated preference pairs ranked by a voltage-penalty metric, injecting voltage-awareness beyond DC imitation. Finally, best-of-NN selection provides an inference-time addition by choosing the best feasible candidate under the target metric. On IEEE 118-bus PSPS scenarios, fine-tuning substantially improves DC objective values versus zero-shot generation, reduces AC power-flow failure from 50% to single digits, and improves voltage-penalty outcomes on the common-success set. Code and data-generation scripts are released to support reproducibility.

Mohamad Chehade, Hao Zhu

Chandra Family Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, USA

Power SystemsLarge Language Model-Guided OptimizationOptimal Power Flow
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Feb 16, 2026

Fault Detection in Electrical Distribution System using Autoencoders

In recent times, there has been considerable interest in fault detection within electrical power systems, garnering attention from both academic researchers and industry professionals. Despite the development of numerous fault detection methods and their adaptations over the past decade, their practical application remains highly challenging. Given the probabilistic nature of fault occurrences and parameters, certain decision-making tasks could be approached from a probabilistic standpoint. Protective systems are tasked with the detection, classification, and localization of faulty voltage and current line magnitudes, culminating in the activation of circuit breakers to isolate the faulty line. An essential aspect of designing effective fault detection systems lies in obtaining reliable data for training and testing, which is often scarce. Leveraging deep learning techniques, particularly the powerful capabilities of pattern classifiers in learning, generalizing, and parallel processing, offers promising avenues for intelligent fault detection. To address this, our paper proposes an anomaly-based approach for fault detection in electrical power systems, employing deep autoencoders. Additionally, we utilize Convolutional Autoencoders (CAE) for dimensionality reduction, which, due to its fewer parameters, requires less training time compared to conventional autoencoders. The proposed method demonstrates superior performance and accuracy compared to alternative detection approaches by achieving an accuracy of 97.62% and 99.92% on simulated and publicly available datasets.

Sidharthenee Nayak, Victor Sam Moses Babu, Chandrashekhar Narayan Bhende +2

ABB Ability Innovation Center, Asea Brown Boveri Company, Hyderabad, 500084, India. · School of Electrical Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology Bhubaneswar, Bhubaneswar, 751013, India. · Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering, BITS Pilani Hyderabad Campus, Hyderabad, 500078, India.

Power System Fault DiagnosisFault DetectionPower SystemsReconstruction-Based Anomaly Detection
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Feb 16, 2026

Joint Sensor Deployment and Physics-Informed Graph Transformer for Smart Grid Attack Detection

This paper proposes a joint multi-objective optimization framework for strategic sensor placement in power systems to enhance attack detection. A novel physics-informed graph transformer network (PIGTN)-based detection model is proposed. Non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm-II (NSGA-II) jointly optimizes sensor locations and the PIGTN's detection performance, while considering practical constraints. The combinatorial space of feasible sensor placements is explored using NSGA-II, while concurrently training the proposed detector in a closed-loop setting. Compared to baseline sensor placement methods, the proposed framework consistently demonstrates robustness under sensor failures and improvements in detection performance in seven benchmark cases, including the 14, 30, IEEE-30, 39, 57, 118 and the 200 bus systems. By incorporating AC power flow constraints, the proposed PIGTN-based detection model generalizes well to unseen attacks and outperforms other graph network-based variants (topology-aware models), achieving improvements up to 37% in accuracy and 73% in detection rate, with a mean false alarms rate of 0.3%. In addition, optimized sensor layouts significantly improve the performance of power system state estimation, achieving a 61%--98% reduction in the average state error.

Mariam Elnour, Mohammad AlShaikh Saleh, Rachad Atat +6

department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX 77840, USA · department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Texas A&M University at Qatar, Doha, Qatar · department of Computer Science and Mathematics, Lebanese American University, Beirut 1102-2801, Lebanon +4

Power SystemsPhysics-Informed GNNsGraph Transformer
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Feb 13, 2026

Probabilistic Wind Power Forecasting with Tree-Based Machine Learning and Weather Ensembles

Accurate production forecasts are essential for the integration of renewable energy sources into the power grid. This paper illustrates how to obtain probabilistic forecasts of wind power generation using gradient boosting trees and an ensemble of weather forecasts. To this end, we perform a comparative analysis across three state-of-the-art probabilistic prediction methods-conformalized quantile regression, natural gradient boosting and conditional diffusion models-all of which can be combined with tree-based machine learning. The methods are validated using four years of data for all Belgian offshore wind farms. We benchmark the models against the power curve and a calibrated wake model as well as a probabilistic method using stochastic variational Gaussian process regression. The tree-based models significantly reduce the mean absolute error in comparison to the deterministic baselines. Additionally, all three methods outperform the Gaussian process baseline in probabilistic skill, while two out of the three also improve point forecast accuracy. The conditional diffusion model attains the best performance, with improvements of 5% in mean absolute error and 12% in continuous rank probability score compared to the probabilistic baseline. Last, the results indicate an average improvement in point forecast accuracy of 17% by using an ensemble of weather forecasts instead of a single provider.

Max Bruninx, Diederik van Binsbergen, Timothy Verstraeten +2

Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Brussels, Belgium · Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway

Gradient-Boosted Decision TreesEnsemble LearningTime Series ForecastingConformal PredictionWind Power ForecastingConditional Diffusion Models+2
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Jan 15, 2026

CROCS: A Two-Stage Clustering Framework for Behaviour-Centric Consumer Segmentation with Smart Meter Data

With grid operators confronting rising uncertainty from renewable integration and a broader push toward electrification, Demand-Side Management (DSM) -- particularly Demand Response (DR) -- has attracted significant attention as a cost-effective mechanism for balancing modern electricity systems. Unprecedented volumes of consumption data from a continuing global deployment of smart meters enable consumer segmentation based on real usage behaviours, promising to inform the design of more effective DSM and DR programs. However, existing clustering-based segmentation methods insufficiently reflect the behavioural diversity of consumers, often relying on rigid temporal alignment, and faltering in the presence of anomalies, missing data, or large-scale deployments. To address these challenges, we propose a novel two-stage clustering framework -- Clustered Representations Optimising Consumer Segmentation (CROCS). In the first stage, each consumer's daily load profiles are clustered independently to form a Representative Load Set (RLS), providing a compact summary of their typical diurnal consumption behaviours. In the second stage, consumers are clustered using the Weighted Sum of Minimum Distances (WSMD), a novel set-to-set measure that compares RLSs by accounting for both the prevalence and similarity of those behaviours. Finally, community detection on the WSMD-induced graph reveals higher-order prototypes that embody the shared diurnal behaviours defining consumer groups, enhancing the interpretability of the resulting clusters. Extensive experiments on both synthetic and real Australian smart meter datasets demonstrate that CROCS captures intra-consumer variability, uncovers both synchronous and asynchronous behavioural similarities, and remains robust to anomalies and missing data, while scaling efficiently through natural parallelisation. These results...

Luke W. Yerbury, Ricardo J. G. B. Campello, G. C. Livingston +2

ClusteringDemand ResponseTime Series ClusteringPower Systems
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Jan 7, 2026

Accounting for Optimal Control in the Sizing of Isolated Hybrid Renewable Energy Systems Using Imitation Learning

Decarbonization of isolated or off-grid energy systems through phase-in of large shares of intermittent solar or wind generation requires co-installation of energy storage or continued use of existing fossil dispatchable power sources to balance supply and demand. The effective CO2 emission reduction depends on the relative capacity of the energy storage and renewable sources, the stochasticity of the renewable generation, and the control of the isolated energy system. While the operation of the energy storage and dispatchable sources impacts the optimal sizing of the system, it is challenging to account for the effect of finite-horizon optimal control at the stage of system sizing. In this work, we present a flexible and computationally efficient sizing framework for energy storage and renewable capacity in isolated energy systems, accounting for uncertainty in the renewable generation and the optimal control. We implement an imitation learning approach to stochastic neural model predictive control (MPC) which allows us to relate the battery storage and wind peak capacities to the emissions reduction and investment costs while accounting for finite horizon, optimal control without solving an infeasible number of optimization problems. We evaluate the proposed sizing framework on a case study of an offshore energy system with a gas turbine, a wind farm and a battery energy storage system (BESS). In this case, we find a nonlinear, nontrivial relationship between the investment costs and the reduction in gas usage for different wind and BESS capacities.

Simon Halvdansson, Lucas Ferreira Bernardino, Brage Rugstad Knudsen

SINTEF Energy Research, Trondheim, Norway.

Power Systems
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Dec 27, 2025

Comparing Object Detection Models for Electrical Substation Component Mapping

Electrical substations are a significant component of an electrical grid. Indeed, the assets at these substations (e.g., transformers) are vulnerable to hazards such as hurricanes, flooding, earthquakes, and geomagnetically induced currents (GICs). Because failures can have significant economic and public safety implications, identifying key substation components is essential for quantifying vulnerability. Unfortunately, traditional manual mapping of substation infrastructure is time-consuming and labor-intensive. Therefore, an autonomous solution utilizing computer vision models is preferable, as it offers greater convenience and efficiency. In this study, we train and compare 16 models on a manually labeled dataset of US substation images. These models include 12 You Only Look Once (YOLO) models, 2 Roboflow Detection Transformer (RF-DETR) models, and 2 Cascade R-CNN models. RF-DETR-large achieved the highest overall detection performance with mAP@50 and mAP@50:95 scores of 0.881 and 0.632, respectively. Across all models, alternate energy systems were detected most accurately, while transformers and reactors were more difficult to identify due to their smaller size and greater visual variability. Applying our best-performing model to nationwide imagery yielded approximately 22,591 component detections across 11,083 unique substations within the United States. These detections were broken down by state and Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) regions, with Florida (2,478 detections) and Midcontinent Independent System Operator (MISO; 4,329 detections) having the largest number of detections in their respective categories.

Namish Bansal, Haley Mody, Dennies Kiprono Bor +2

George Mason University

Object DetectionPower SystemsYou Only Look Once
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Nov 25, 2025

Reinforcement Learning to Initialize Newton-Raphson for AC Power Flow with Quantum Annealing-Based Environment Updates

The Newton-Raphson (NR) method is widely used for solving power flow (PF) equations due to its quadratic convergence. However, its performance deteriorates under poor initialization or extreme operating scenarios, e.g., high levels of renewable energy penetration. We propose the use of reinforcement learning (RL) to optimize the initialization of NR, and introduce a quantum-enhanced RL environment update mechanism that addresses the combinatorially large action space at each RL timestep by formulating the voltage adjustment task as a Quadratic Unconstrained Binary Optimization (QUBO) problem, solved with an Ising machine. RL initialization is benchmarked against flat start and start from the DC (linearized) PF solution on a standard 4-bus system, Iwamoto's ill-conditioned 11-bus system, and the IEEE 118-bus system under normal and stressed loading and reactive power limits, with verified operational solutions. On all systems, a supervised initializer refined by RL requires fewer NR iterations than flat and DC starts and than the same initializer without RL, for all seeds. For example, on the 118-bus system under normal and stressed loading, it reached 2.04 and 2.86 NR iterations, compared with 3.02 and 5.13 from DC start and 2.61 and 3.09 without RL. In wall-clock time, this pays off only for an initializer integrated into the solver and reused for many solves on a fixed topology. On the 4-bus system, a quantum-enhanced RL agent with a quantum-inspired annealer moved challenging initial states that required 29 and 44 NR iterations to initializations that required three NR iterations within one RL timestep.

Zeynab Kaseb, Matthias Moller, Lindsay Spoor +4

Electrical Sustainable Energy, Delft University of Technology, P.O. Box 5031, 2600 GA Delft, The Netherlands. · Applied Mathematics, Delft University of Technology, P.O. Box 5031, 2600 GA Delft, The Netherlands. · Leiden Institute of Advanced Computer Science, Leiden University, P.O. Box 9512, 2300 RA Leiden, The Netherlands. +3

Reinforcement LearningQuantum AnnealingLearning to OptimizePower Systems
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Nov 7, 2025

ProDER: A Continual Learning Approach for Fault Classification and Localization in Evolving Smart Grids

Data-driven fault diagnosis models for smart grids are usually trained once on a fixed dataset, whereas in operation new fault types appear and monitoring is extended to new grid zones. Retraining from scratch on all accumulated data is costly, while naively updating the model on new data causes catastrophic forgetting. To address this problem, we formulate fault type classification and fault zone localization as continual learning (CL) problems and design four evaluation scenarios on the IEEE 13-node test feeder, three class-incremental and one domain-incremental. We then propose Prototype-based Dark Experience Replay (ProDER), which extends DER++ with prototype attraction and prototype-level repulsion losses that stabilize the feature space, temperature-scaled logit distillation, and a prototype-aware replay memory that retains both core and boundary samples of each class. ProDER achieves the highest accuracy among the tested CL methods in all scenarios, with an average accuracy of 58.2%, 6.6 points above the strongest competing method (DPDMR, 51.6%) and only 3.2 points below joint training (61.4%). Per scenario, it improves over the strongest competitor by 4.2 to 7.4 points and closes the gap to joint training to as little as 1.0 point in fault type classification, while matching it in fault zone localization. Moreover, it remains the best method when the replay buffer is substantially reduced. These results show that prototype-guided replay is an effective, memory-bounded way to keep fault diagnosis models up to date as the grid evolves, while validation on field measurements remains a necessary next step.

Emad Efatinasab, Nahal Azadi, Davide Dalle Pezze +3

Department of Information Engineering, University of Padova. · School of Computing, Newcastle University.

Replay-Based Continual LearningPrototype-Based ClassificationPower SystemsClass-Incremental LearningFault LocalizationFault Diagnosis+1
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Oct 29, 2025

Machine Learning Guided Optimal Transmission Switching to Mitigate Wildfire Ignition Risk

To mitigate acute wildfire ignition risks, utilities de-energize power lines in high-risk areas. The Optimal Power Shutoff (OPS) problem optimizes line energization statuses to manage wildfire ignition risks through de-energizations while reducing load shedding. OPS problems are computationally challenging Mixed-Integer Linear Programs (MILPs) that must be solved rapidly and frequently in operational settings. For a particular power system, OPS instances share a common structure with varying parameters related to wildfire risks, loads, and renewable generation. This motivates the use of Machine Learning (ML) for solving OPS problems by exploiting shared patterns across instances. In this paper, we develop an ML-guided framework that quickly produces high-quality de-energization decisions by extending existing ML-guided MILP solution methods while integrating domain knowledge on the number of energized and de-energized lines. Results on a large-scale realistic California-based synthetic test system show that the proposed ML-guided method produces high-quality solutions faster than traditional optimization methods.

Weimin Huang, Ryan Piansky, Bistra Dilkina +1

Department of Computer Science University of Southern California Los Angeles, CA, USA · School of Electrical and Computer Engineering Georgia Institute of Technology Atlanta, GA, USA

Mixed-Integer Linear ProgrammingLearning to OptimizePower Systems
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Sep 26, 2025

Physics-informed GNN for medium-high voltage AC power flow with edge-aware attention and line search correction operator

Physics-informed graph neural networks (PIGNNs) have emerged as fast AC power-flow solvers that can replace the classic NewtonRaphson (NR) solvers, especially when thousands of scenarios must be evaluated. However, current PIGNNs still need accuracy improvements at parity speed; in particular, the soft constraint on the physics loss is inoperative at inference, which can deter operational adoption. We address this with PIGNN-Attn-LS, combining an edge-aware attention mechanism that explicitly encodes line physics via per-edge biases to form a fully differentiable knownoperator layer inside the computation graph, with a backtracking line-search-based globalized correction operator that restores an operative decrease criterion at inference. Training and testing use a realistic High-/Medium-Voltage scenario generator, with NR used only to construct reference states. On held-out HV cases consisting of 4-32-bus grids, PIGNN-Attn-LS achieves a test RMSE of 0.00033 p.u. in voltage and 0.08 deg in angle, outperforming the PIGNN-MLP baseline by 99.5% and 87.1%, respectively. With streaming micro-batches, it delivers 2-5x faster batched inference than NR on 4-1024-bus grids.

Changhun Kim, Timon Conrad, Redwanul Karim +6

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

Efficient Neural Network InferenceGraph Attention NetworksPhysics-Informed MLPhysics-Informed GNNsPower Systems
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May 23, 2025

Unsupervised Clustering for Fault Analysis in High-Voltage Power Systems Using Voltage and Current Signals

The widespread use of sensors in modern power grids has led to the accumulation of large amounts of voltage and current waveform data, especially during fault events. However, the lack of labeled datasets poses a significant challenge for fault classification and analysis. This paper explores the application of unsupervised clustering techniques for fault diagnosis in high-voltage power systems. A dataset provided by the Réseau de Transport d'Électricité (RTE) is analyzed, with frequency domain features extracted using the Fast Fourier Transform (FFT). The K-Means algorithm is then applied to identify underlying patterns in the data, enabling automated fault categorization without the need for labeled training samples. The resulting clusters are evaluated in collaboration with power system experts to assess their alignment with real-world fault characteristics. The results demonstrate the potential of unsupervised learning for scalable and data-driven fault analysis by structuring large unlabeled waveform datasets and supporting targeted expert review.

Julian Oelhaf, Georg Kordowich, Andreas Maier +2

Pattern Recognition Lab, Friedrich-Alexander-University Erlangen-Nuremberg, Erlangen, Germany · Institute of Electrical Energy Systems, Friedrich-Alexander-University Erlangen-Nuremberg, Erlangen, Germany

Unsupervised ClusteringPower System Fault DiagnosisPower Systems
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May 1, 2025

Predicting Estimated Times of Restoration for Electrical Outages Using Longitudinal Tabular Transformers

Utilities publish Estimated Times of Restoration (ETRs) for customer-facing storm outages, and their accuracy governs whether customers can make sound decisions about food, medical equipment, and relocation. Prior work treats ETR as static tabular regression in which each outage contributes one record, discarding the fact that every development of an outage, from crew assignment through dispatch, suspension, damage assessment and partial restoration, is recorded as a revision. We reformulate ETR prediction as longitudinal tabular regression and introduce a Longitudinal Tabular Transformer (LTT), an axial-attention model that consumes the revisions preceding a prediction and issues a refined estimate at every one. On 242{,}928 storm-attributed outages from a cohort of 526{,}468 filtered events and 10.0 million revisions at six operating companies, LTT reduces customer-weighted asymmetric error at all six, by a median of 36.9,% against the estimates the utilities published during the same storms and 11.3,% against the strongest learned baseline at each. It is the only method improving on the incumbent's satisfaction impact at all six companies while also reducing root mean squared error at all six. Stratification by revision index shows that LTT error is largest at the first revision, where no history is available, and falls monotonically as revisions accumulate.

Bogireddy Sai Prasanna Teja, Valliappan Muthukaruppan, Carls Benjamin

Exelon Corporation, Chicago, IL, USA

Event Time PredictionTransformerTabular MLTabular RegressionPower Systems
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Oct 27, 2023

LOOP-MAC: Learning-Based Multi-Agent Coordination with Guaranteed Local Feasibility in a Virtual Power Plant

By aggregating distributed energy resources (DERs) into a single dispatchable resource, virtual power plants (VPPs) enable the grid to use the flexibility of numerous small-scale DERs. Delivering an aggregate VPP commitment requires multi-agent coordination, where agents manage local DER models and operating constraints while jointly meeting a power commitment within limited communication rounds. Classical distributed optimization is computationally intensive, requiring iterative local optimization and repeated communication to reach consensus. Learning-based methods can accelerate coordination but often lack guarantees of local feasibility and accurate commitment tracking. This paper proposes LOOP-MAC (Learning to Optimize the Optimization Process for Multi-Agent Coordination), a fully decentralized learning-based framework that ensures local feasibility by construction while efficiently reducing the aggregate commitment gap. LOOP-MAC employs a two-stage decision process. Learned coordination uses neural optimizers equipped with a gauge layer to produce locally feasible schedules through a few rounds of message exchange. Local adjustment then rebalances each schedule toward feasible flexibility extremes using a commitment-gap estimate inferred from messages already received. The adjusted schedule remains locally feasible as a convex combination of feasible schedules, and the adjustment requires no additional communication round. On a 100-agent VPP, five communication rounds followed by local adjustment reduce the mean commitment gap from 5.1% to 0.75% of the agents' aggregate absolute power and the optimality gap from 3.93% to 3.07% relative to learned coordination alone. Per-agent online computation takes approximately 1.1 ms, including the adjustment.

Meiyi Li, Lucas Ruda, Javad Mohammadi

Multi-Agent CoordinationPower SystemsDecentralized OptimizationLearning to Optimize
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