Power System Grid Operation Using Synchrophasor Technology

Sarma Nuthalapati is currently working as Principal EMS Network Applications Engineer for Peak Reliability (Peak) in Vancouver, WA, USA. Peak’s Reliability Coordinator Area includes all or parts of 14 western states, British Columbia, and the northern portion of Baja California, Mexico. Sarma supports Energy Management Systems (EMS) network applications such as State Estimation, Real-time Contingency Analysis, Remedial Action Schemes, Forced Outage Detection, and others that are critical to providing wide area situational awareness in control center operations. He is also an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering at Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, USA. He has been with Electric Reliability Council of Texas, Inc. (ERCOT), USA, in the Advanced Network Applications Group of the Operations Support Department from August 2007 to March 2016 and was involved in the area of network applications and involved in a Synchrophasor Project funded by the USDepartment of Energy (DOE) under the Smart Grid Initiatives Grants. He is currently the Chair of the IEEE Task Force on Real Time Contingency Analysis. He also actively participates in the North American SynchroPhasor Initiative (NASPI) Working Group meetings and was given NASPI Control Room Solutions Task Team Most Valuable Player (MVP) Award for ‘being a leading organizer and contributor to the Control Room Solutions Task Team (CRSTT) and the NERC Synchronized Measurement Subcommittee and a public champion for Synchrophasor Technology’. He is a senior member of IEEE and a member of IEEE Power and Energy Society (PES). He is also a distinguished lecturer in the IEEE PES Distinguished Lecturer Program. He received BTech (Electrical Engineering) and MTech (Power Systems Engineering) degrees from National Institute of Technology, Warangal, (formerly called as Regional Engineering College, Warangal), India, in 1983 and 1986 respectively. He obtained his PhD degree from Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi, India, in 1995. He carried out his PhD work in the area of 'Network Reconfiguration in Distribution Systems' under the supervision of the late Dr. K.S. Prakasa Rao. The research work involved developing new algorithms for various aspects of network reconfiguration such as reconfiguration for Service Restoration, Load Balancing and Loss Minimization in Distribution Systems. These methods are very useful in the context of Smart Grids and Distribution Automation.