Research Interests
Clean Energy Systems: energy systems integration, energy cyber-physical-systems, power systems models, renewable integration, co-simulation, hardware-in-the-loop testing, responsive demand, long-term unit commitment, generation and demand resource planning, ancillary services, carbon emission estimates, regulation/market design.
Design under uncertainty: adaptive/approximate dynamic programming, flexibility in design, trade-off analysis, multi-disciplinary optimization
Related: Energy efficient buildings, mechatronics, modular architectures, embedded systems
Current Research
My current research explores the integration of renewable and efficient energy systems. I develop and apply advanced electric power system analysis tools to study the interactions among distributed energy resources (e.g. solar photovoltaics, storage), responsive demand, and the larger electric power system. This work also crosses traditional boundaries to understand the interactions among electricity, transportation, fuels, thermal, and intelligent systems. My work includes conducting power-hardware-in-the-loop testing to simulate the impact of new hardware devices on the existing energy system and vice-versa. Often these diverse projects require co-simulation that integrates historically separate approaches into a cohesive modeling framework. I also apply high-performance computing and stochastic methods to enhance these tools and analyses.
Previously, I developed ways to capture detailed operations within long term power system resource (generation and demand) planning models. This approach uses clustered integer unit commitment based operations to capture integer on/off decisions, ramp limits, minimum up/down time, reserves, etc at an hourly time step for one year (8760hr) . These considerations become crucial for designing, planning, and policy making in advanced electric power systems – those with high levels of renewable generation, active demand participation, and distributed storage – but are typically ignored or highly simplified in today’s planning. I also used approximate dynamic programming (ADP) to explore the complex uncertainties across this wide time range from sub-hourly to decades.
Recent Publications & Presentations
Check out my ResearchGate page for the most up to date list of publications
As of 2014:
Palmintier, B., Lundstrom, B., Chakraborty, S., & Williams, T. (In Review). A Power-Hardware-in-the-Loop Platform with Remote Distribution Circuit Co-simulation for Advanced Photovoltaic Inverter Testing. IEEE Transactions on Industrial Electronics.
Palmintier, B. (In Review). Flexibility in Generation Planning: Identifying Key Operating Constraints. To be presented at the 18th Power Systems Computation Conference (PSCC’14), Wroclaw, Poland, August 2014.
Cale, J., Palmintier, B., Narang, D., & Carroll, K. (2014). Clustering Distribution Feeders in the Arizona Public Service Territory. To be Presented at the 40th IEEE Photovoltaic Specialists Conference [PVSC], Denver, CO, June 2014.
Williams, T., Fuller, J., Schneider, K. P., Palmintier, B., Lundstrom, B., & Chakraborty, S. (2014). Examining System-Wide Impacts of Solar PV Control Systems with a Power Hardware-in-the-Loop Platform. To be Presented at the 40th IEEE Photovoltaic Specialists Conference, Denver, CO, June 2014.
Palmintier, B., & Webster, M. (In Review). Impact of Operational Flexibility on Generation Planning. IEEE Transactions in Power Systems.
Palmintier, B., & Webster, M. (To Appear 2014). Unit Clustering for Efficient Operational Flexibility Modeling. IEEE Transactions in Power Systems. (extended working paper)
Webster, M., Donohoo, P., & Palmintier, B. (2013). Water-CO2 trade-offs in electricity generation planning. Nature Climate Change, 3(12), 1029–1032.
Palmintier, B., & Webster, M. (2011, November 16). Electricity Planning with Environmental Policy Uncertainty using ADP: Carbon Policies and Renewables. Presented at the INFORMS 2011 Annual Meeting, Charlotte, NC.
Palmintier, B., & Webster, M. (2011). Impact of Unit Commitment Constraints on Generation Expansion Planning with Renewables. In Proceedings of 2011 IEEE Power and Energy Society General Meeting. Presented at the 2011 IEEE Power and Energy Society General Meeting, Detroit, MI: IEEE. (paper) (presentation)
Palmintier, B. (2010, June 10). Incorporating High Dimensional Uncertainty and Operational Constraints Into Long- Term Generation Expansion Models Using Approximate Dynamic Programming. Presented at the FERC Technical Conference on Planning Models and Software, Washington, D.C.
Previous Research
My PhD Dissertation: Incorporating Operational Flexibility into Electric Generation Planning: Impacts and Methods for System Design and Policy Analysis (MIT 2013) — warning 23MB
Mechatronics Projects (Energy Monitoring, Satellites, Antarctica, etc.)
The Emerald Protocol Suite: Design and Implementation of a Modular, Distributed Architecture for Small Satellite Command, Telemetry, and Power Systems (Stanford Engineer’s Thesis, 2004)