Victor Zavala, University of Wisconsin Madison
Hosted by Vlad Dvorkin
Location: 1303 EECS
Time: 3:30 PM – 4:30 PM
Abstract:
We discuss how emerging trends in electricity markets provide economic and environmental incentives for the development of new and flexible technologies capable of shifting loads across space and time and across scales. Harnessing flexibility is critical for the power grid as this seeks to absorb increasing amounts of intermittent renewable power. However, participation of devices in highly dynamic/volatile markets can lead to fast degradation and lost value, which hinders participation. This raises the need to quantify the value of different types of flexibility provided by devices and to potentially create new markets that properly remunerate such flexibility. We illustrate the concepts via applications in energy storage, data centers, and electrochemical manufacturing.
Biography:
Victor M. Zavala is the Baldovin-DaPra Professor in the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and is affiliated with the Mathematics and Computer Science Division at Argonne National Laboratory. He holds a B.Sc. degree from Universidad Iberoamericana and a Ph.D. degree from Carnegie Mellon University, both in chemical engineering. He is an associate editor for ACS-I&ECR and is on editorial board of the journals Mathematical Programming Computation and Computers & Chemical engineering. He is a recipient of NSF and DOE Early Career awards and of the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE). His research interests include data science, control, and optimization and applications to chemical, energy, and environmental systems.