Linh Vu, a Ph.D. student in Electrical and Computer Engineering at Clarkson University, recently received the Best Paper Award in the Bulk Power System Planning and Operation Session for his research work on “Safe Exploration Reinforcement Learning for Load Restoration using Invalid Action Masking”. He received the award to be announced at the 2023 IEEE Power & Energy Society General Meeting (2023 PES GM) Conference in Orlando, Florida. Other co-authors of this paper include Thanh-Long Vu, Tuyen Vu, and Anurag Srivastava.
Linh is jointly advised by Dr. Tony Tuyen Vu, Assistant Professor of Electrical & Computer Engineering at Clarkson and Dr. Thanh-Long Vu, a Senior Scientist with Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL). IEEE PESGM is the most prestigious conference in the power and energy society that convenes academic researchers and industry professionals worldwide to exchange ideas on the latest developments in power and energy. The conference encompasses an extensive array of subjects, comprising power generation, transmission, distribution, and utilization, alongside renewable energy sources, electric vehicles, and smart grid technologies.
Linh’s research focuses on developing an innovative learning-based methodology to address the service restoration for power distribution systems and interconnected microgrids after major outages. The proposed approach utilizes an artificial intelligence (AI) approach, a multi-agent deep reinforcement learning algorithm to optimize the service restoration process in distributed systems, by determining the optimal operational sequence of circuit breakers. Dr. Tuyen Vu says, the increasing decentralization of power grids with renewable energy integration brings both opportunities and challenges for community resilience. Linh has brought AI to the attention of society in a multi-agent approach that increases autonomy of decentralized power grids under extreme events such as cyberattacks or natural disasters. We hope that our research approach will stimulate more innovative ideas to follow to strengthen our electrical energy infrastructures and increase the resilience of our communities.
