This seminar is hosted by the Oxford Martin Programme on Complexity and CABDyN Complexity Centre, University of Oxford

Speaker: Michael Chertkov, Los Alamos National Laboratory

Summary: Today’s electric power grids, the largest engineered systems ever built, already demonstrate complex nonlinear dynamics where, e.g., localised collective effects of thousands of small consumer appliances may produce serious malfunctions of sections of the grid. These collective dynamics are not well understood and are expected to become more complex in tomorrow’s grids as consumer appliances become more intelligent and autonomous. Tomorrow will have to integrate the intermittent power from wind and solar farms whose fluctuating outputs create far more complex perturbations. Guarding against the worst of those perturbations will require taking protective measures based on ideas from probability and statistical physics.

In this talk aimed at applied mathematicians, physicists and network scientists we briefly review the history of electrical grids and then introduce a few of the physical, optimization and control principles and phenomena in today’s grids and those that are expected to play a major role in tomorrow grids.

Sandwiches and drinks will be provided