An AI-based approach to microgrids that can restore power more efficiently and reliably in an outage

It’s a story that’s become all too familiar—high winds knock out a power line, and a community can go without power for hours to days, an inconvenience at best and a dangerous situation at worst. UC Santa Cruz Assistant Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering Yu Zhang and his lab are leveraging tools to improve the efficiency, reliability, and resilience of power systems and have developed an artificial intelligence (AI) -based approach for the smart control of microgrids for power restoration when outages occur.