Mads Almassalkhi: Mitigating Climate Change with Power Engineering

In this talk, Dr. Mads Almassalkhi presents an overview of how power engineering and energy systems modeling and optimization can play key roles to support large-scale integration of renewable generation to enable a clean energy future and mitigate climate change.

According to the United Nations, numerous scientific reports, and the majority of Americans, climate change is a global challenge that should be prioritized. One major path forward to mitigate climate change is to install lots of new renewable generation: wind turbines and solar PV arrays. However, as seen in Hawaii, California, and Vermont, having lots of renewables and can impact reliability of the electric grid. In fact, the grid must become more flexible and efficient to absorb the windy and sunny days and more responsive to unexpected events.

Mads Almassalkhi is an assistant professor in the Department of Electrical and Biomedical Engineering (EBE) at the University of Vermont, director of Vermont's new center for sustainable, resilient, and autonomous systems (VECTORS), and co-founder of tech startup Packetized Energy. His research interests lie at the intersection of power systems, mathematical optimization, and controls and focus on improving responsiveness, efficiency, and resilience of power and energy systems.

Learn more about the Gund Institute: https://www.uvm.edu/gund​​
Explore Gund events: https://www.uvm.edu/gund/events​