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Smart Grid

To help realize the promise of a smarter, sustainable and reliable electric grid for the future, the Smart Grid Focus Group brings together a number of interdisciplinary Stanford researchers working on issues such as analyzing large-scale individual smart meter data to enhance our knowledge on consumption behavior, developing scalable data analytics for demand-side energy management strategies, modeling and simulation of the electric grid, integration and coordination of distributed energy resources, and grid stability with renewable energy.  Smart grids provide more accurate and timely information to companies for making informed energy management decisions, and include technologies such as sensing, forecasting, and data analytics.  

Corporate membership in the Smart Grid Focus Group provides extraordinary access to faculty, grad students, and cutting edge research in smart grid. Annual review meetings will present the latest Stanford research and provide ample opportunities to discuss research plans. Companies will have opportunities for informal interactions with professors, grad students, and other companies.  Stanford Energy 3.0 Membership includes membership in the Fellow-Mentor-Advisor Program or a focus group such as the Batteries Focus Group, Smart Grid Focus Group, or Solar Focus Group. 

For more information about the Smart Grid Focus Group, please contact Jim Chen, Managing Director, at (650) 723-2019, jimchen@stanford.edu.

Smart Grid Focus Group Researchers

Abbas El Gamal
Professor, Chair, Electrical Engineering

Categories: Simulation, sensors, and modeling
Research focus: Development of cloud-based simulation package to model demand response and electric system reliability and efficiency, statistical tools, signal processing, and system-on-chip design techniques to problems in imaging and configurable circuits, theoretical problems arising in communications and networks.

Andrea Goldsmith
Professor, Electrical Engineering

Categories: Communications and networks
Research focus: Design, analysis, and performance limits of wireless systems and networks, novel techniques, protocols, design and capacity analysis, multiple-antenna wireless networks, cognitive radios, sensor and networks, cross-layer wireless network design, and applications of communications and signal processing.

Ramesh Johari
Associate Professor, Management Science and Engineering

Categories: Systems and networks
Research focus: Design and management of large-scale complex networks, such as the internet, using tools from operations research, engineering, and economics, models to analyze efficient market mechanisms for resource allocation in networks, and network densification.

Arun Majumdar
Professor, Mechanical Engineering

Categories: Thermoelectric energy conversion
Research focus: Thermoelectric energy conversion using solid-state material and devices, heat and mass transfer in nanostructured materials, waste heat recovery, phonon dynamics and transport in low-dimensional materials, transport and reactions in confined liquids (nanofluidics), chemomechanics of small and macromolecules.

Ram Rajagopal
Assistant Professor Civil and Environmental Engineering

Categories: Simulation and modeling
Research focus: Use of demand-side data analytics to integrate and distribute renewable energy systems, hardware and software for sensing and control, customer segmentation using load profiles, demand response targeting and management with smart meter data, design and control of local grids.

Juan Rivas-Davila
Assistant Professor, Electrical Engineering

Categories: Power supplies and energy savings Research focus: New generation of power electronics based on high switching frequencies, energy savings, reduced electrical noise, RF power amplifiers, resonant converters, soft switching topologies and design of power converters for operation in harsh environments