Energy Seminar: Adam Birchfield

About 40% of energy consumed in North America transits the vast network of transmission lines and transformers known as the electric power grid. This percentage is likely to be growing as industries become more electrified (for example, the rising sales of electric vehicles). Large-scale electric grids will likely play a central role in future sustainable energy systems, since they facilitate long-distance, bulk transfer of energy, especially from remote areas where wind and solar generation are most productive. But in planning and managing this large, interconnected system, new technologies are needed to ensure the system will be resilient against natural and manmade threats—extreme weather, cyber-physical security, etc. In this talk, we will present: (1) an overview of the electric power grid with past, current, and future trends, (2) how modeling and simulation can help predict hidden failure modes and mitigate the effects of extreme events on power systems, and (3) highlights of new technologies that can contribute toward planning our grid to be stable and resilient for the future.

Adam B. Birchfield is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Texas A&M University. Prior to this he was a research engineer at the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI). He received the B.E.E. degree from Auburn University in 2014, M.S. in electrical and computer engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2016, and Ph.D. in electrical engineering from Texas A&M University in 2018. Dr. Birchfield’s research is in power system modeling, large system transient dynamics, applications of synthetic power grid datasets, and the resilience of power systems to high-impact, low-frequency events.