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8/8/2019 2008-2009 ECE News
1/8
ECE N1
COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING
DEPARTMENT OF
ELECTRICAL & COMPUTER
ENGINEERING
DEPARTMENT OF
ELECTRICAL & COMPUTER
ENGINEERING
NIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-MADISON
ECE NEWSECE NEWS
onvincing people to wake up in the
morning and play a game on a sandy
beach with palm trees seems like a
marketable idea, especially i the game helps
people sleep more eectively and stay alertthroughout the day.
Thats exactly what inventor Justin Beck
(BS 09) hopes is true, and the judges at the
2009 Innovation Day competition thought he
was on to something. In February, Beck, along
with his partner Daniel Gartenberg, a psychology
and neuroscience student, won $10,000 at
the 15th anniversary o the Schoos Prize or
Creativity, an annual UW-Madison undergraduate
invention competition that rewards innovative
and marketable ideas.
Their winning idea, called Proactive Sleep,
is a sotware application or the iPhone and theiPod touch that serves as a sophisticated alarm
clock, waking users during the light sleep phase
o their cycle. In the morning, users play an easy
gamewhich currently is depicted on a
beach scenethat tests alertness.
The sotware then automatically
recongures as it learns the users
unique sleep cycle, ultimately elimi-
nating morning grogginess and
helping users stay more alert
all day. Beck and Gartenberg
plan to put Proactive Sleep
on the market in the nextew months via the Apple
application store.
Proactive Sleep
is only one o
many inventions
Beck created while
he was a student at UW-
Madison. He participated in
Innovation Day three times
(Continued on page 5)
YEAR IN REV
2008-200
C
A
Innovation Day winnerInnovation Day winnergraduatesafter four years of success
www.ng.wsc./cwww.ng.wsc./c
new wind energy curriculum will be developed by several UW-Madison engineering and
atmospheric and oceanic sciences aculty and sta thanks to a nearly $400,000 grant
rom the U.S. Department o Energy. Principal investigators include Associate Proessors
Giri Venkataramanan and Bernie Lesieutre, Proessor Tom Jahns, and Atmospheric and Oceanic
Sciences Assistant Proessor Ankur Desai.
The curriculum will include a series o undergraduate and graduate-level courses oered on campus
and online that center on wind energy and power engineering. Four power engineering courses will
be available, including Wind Turbine Electric Generators and Controls, Power Electronic Converters
for Wind Turbines, Electric Utility Wind Power Integrationand Small Wind Turbine Design.
Students who take these courses and complete an internship at a utility or energy-related
company will be eligible or a new certicate program in wind energy. Several wind-energy policy
and economics electives will be oered through other departments on campus. A periodic seminar
series addressing wind energy integration and an annual proessional conerence rom theWisconsin Public Utility Institute will also be developed rom the DOE grant.
The DOE grant is due in part to the support o Vestas, the worlds leading producer o wind
power technology, which recently entered into a strategic partnership with the College o Engineering
that promises to propel wind energy research, provide student learning opportunities and give the
company a long-term presence in Madison.
Wind energy is a growing source o new power generation in the world and the technology
has even greater untapped potential, says Jahns, who directs the Wisconsin Power Electronics
Research Center and helped establish the partnership. By teaming with an industry leader like
Vestas, our research environment will thrive and Wisconsin will see expanded opportunities in
wind energy and other renewable energy options.
Vsts ptnshp
yields DOE grant for wind energycurriculum
(Continued on page 6)
Giri Venkataramaand Tom Jahns inwind tunnel. Thewill be a key testacility or wind-eprojects.
8/8/2019 2008-2009 ECE News
2/8
ECE NEWS2
t is my great pleasure to introduce
mysel as the new ECE department
chair. I am joined by Proessor
, who will serve as the vice chair
or operations. Some o you know me and I
would sincerely appreciate hearing rom you
with updates on how you are doing. Others I
have not had the pleasure to meet; however,
I would love or you to introduce yourselves
by E-mail, phone or a drop-in visit. I there
is any way in which I can be o assistance,
please do not hesitate to contact me.
On behal o the entire ECE amily, I wish
to express deep gratitude to Proessors
and
, department chair and co-chair rom2005-2009. With their outstanding leader-
ship and dedicated service, the department
enters the next decade with many strengths
and opportunities upon which to build. I eel
extremely ortunate to have inherited the role
o chair rom their successul stewardship.It is no secret that ECE
and higher education
in general are
aected by the
same challenges
(economic,environmental and
inrastructural) that are
acing individuals, the nation
and the globe. I see these challenges as a
stimulus to reexamine many aspects o the
department and seek improvements in how
we aect learning, deliver support services
and acilitate research.
While new approaches will address using
nancial resources more eciently, our
principal priority will remain on maintaining
and improving the quality o student learningand research impact. In the coming year, we
will conduct an intensive strategic planning
initiative that will examine and revise our
organizational structure, curriculum,
instructional approaches and external
communication. For example, a recent up-
date to our departments strategic ve-year
plan organizes our research prole emphases
into the timely categories o energy,
inormation and health. These priorities
Message froM the Chair
refect the importance o electrical and
computer engineering in nding solutions
to grand societal challenges in these areas.
We are also actively contributing to the
College o Engineering 2010 and BeyondInitiative to transorm engineering education
to meet the needs and realities o the uture.
Examples o successul course innovations
led by ECE aculty under this initiative
include Introduction to Societys Engineering
Grand Challengesand a new Engineering
or Energy Sustainability
certicate program.
One importantarea o emphasis
during the next
several years willbe to develop and
nurture our community
o alumni and supportive
riends and amily, both individual and
corporate. Their collective expertise, diverse,
successul career experience, and memories
o UW-Madison and ECE represent a crucial
pool o knowledge and proessional supportresources that we wish to more ully engage
to ensure the success o our uture students,
aculty and sta.
By recognizing the importance odeveloping our resources to maintain our
quality, we are aligning our department with
the colleges plan to endow the department
chair position. This will establish a fexible
pool o resources to support priority
investments in aculty recruitment start-up
packages, teaching ellows, departmental
colloquia with publicly available video
archives, and unds to incubate new explor-
atory initiatives in teaching and research.Duane H. & Dorothy M. Bluemke Professor
John H. Booske, ChairECE Department
IA
UW-Madison computer scienti
elected to national academy
We Would like
to hear fromyou!
As state budgets struggle with increasing
public obligations and declining revenues, we
will increasingly rely on the philanthropy o
those who have a symbiotic relationship with
us. This will be critical to sustain and improve
the exceptional learning and research that
we are committed to providing as our aculty
and students continue to achieve exceptionaloutcomes in the lab and the classroom.
I eel ortunate to have been a member o
an outstanding and deservedly high-ranked
department or almost 20 years, and I look
orward to serving the colleagues, students,
supportive alumni and industrial partners o
ECE as we set sail to an exciting uture.
John Booske, Chair
2416 Engineering Hall1415 Engineering Drive
Madison, WI 53706
Phone: 608/262-3840
Fax: 608/262-1267
E-mail: [email protected]
Web:www.engr.wisc.edu/ece
UW-Madison proessor is amo
65 engineers and nine oreign
associates elected
to the National Academy o
Engineering (NAE) in 2009.
John P. Morgridge Proessor
and E. David Cronon Proessor
has
been ranked among the most
distinguished engineers in the
nation, peer-elected or their exceptional
contributions to engineering research,
practice or education.
Sohi joined the UW-Madison aculty in
1985 and holds appointments in both ECE
and the computer sciences department,
which he chaired rom 2004 to 2008. His
research on high-perormance computersystem design led to papers and patents
that have infuenced both research and
commercial microprocessors. The NAE
election honors his contributions to the
design o high-perormance, super-scalar
computer architectures.
I am proud to be a aculty member at
Wisconsin, whose environment allowed
me to carry out the work or which this
recognition is being given, Sohi says.
Read more about Sohis work at:
.
8/8/2019 2008-2009 ECE News
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ECE N3ECE N3
Airports need regular area surveys to map out possible
obstructions that could aect construction, tree maintenance
or runway approach patterns. A promising alternative to
expensive physical surveying is airborne light detection and ranging (lidar).
Christopher Parrish, a civil and environmental engineering graduate
student, is studying lidar, and he sought advice rom ECE McFarland-
Bascom Proessor Rob Nowak. Together, Nowak and Parrish developed
a new workfow or processing data rom waveorm lidar by taking into
account models or both distortion and signal characteristics.
The approach resulted in a robust, reliable obstruction mapping
method that addresses previous challenges while simpliying workfow.
Parrish applied the new methods to lidar signals collected around the
Madison area with great success, and the two
published their results in the May 2009 issue
o the Journal of Surveying Engineering.
This is a huge advance, says Nowak.
It totally revolutionizes how well they areable to do these automatic airborne surveys
o airports. Parrish estimates a 46-percent
decrease in total obstruction survey completion
time and a 38-percent decrease in human
labor time, according to the most recent
National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration
National Geodetic Survey (NGS) lidar obstruction survey.
Lidar works similarly to radar but uses laser light as its signal. As a
surveying plane fies over an area ocials want to map, it sends out a
laser pulse. Sensors on the plane detect the signal as the laser refects
o the suraces it encounters. Then, engineers collect data rom all the
beams that scanned a particular point in space and map all the detected
refections in a scatterplot. Ocials can use the resulting point cloudsto determine the shape, size and location o obstructions.
(From let): Photos, discrete lidar and waveorm lidar point-clouds o common airport obstructionsa tree(top) and tower(bottom)showing the achievable point density increase usingull-waveorm data.
Rob Nowak
ssistant Proessor Stark C. Draper
has received a prestigious 2009
Faculty Early Career Development
Award (CAREER). CAREER awards recognize
aculty members who are at the beginning o
their academic careers and have developed
creative projects that eectively integrateadvanced research and education.
Draper, who joined the UW-Madison aculty
in all 2007, is researching how to rethink the
undamental architectures o digital commu-
nications to improve the delivery o streaming
data. The long-term potential o his work
could be improved digital communications
service and broader availability or lower cost.
The project will be unded by the American
Recovery and Reinvestment Act o 2009.
A
New airport survey method takes fight
NGS has researched lidar or the past decade. Traditionally, NGS
has used discrete data, ocusing on only the initial return o each
laser pulse, or the ront edge o the return signal. Now, systems
can digitally acquire and save the entire laser return, a process
known as waveorm lidar, which results in scatterplots with an
average o 252 percent more data points than traditional methods.
Traditional methods ocus on what happened to the signal and
the process that distorts it, but they ignore the physical characteristics
o the signal itsel, says Nowak. The new obstruction mapping
method could be applied to a variety o signals that are distorted,
incomplete or noisy. One example is MRI, which Nowak says is a
great example o how the new method could make a big dierencebeyond airports.
dp wins Career wfo stming mi chitctu, sign n fbck
The central technical question Draper will
address is how eedback should be used to
transmit delay-sensitive data in real-world systems
that are aced with resource-constrained and noisy
eedback. The project will address new scenarios
(e.g., wireless ading, multiuser networks, inter-
action with queuing) to develop architecturalinsights, appropriate classes o error correcting
codes, and improved network protocols.
The research will be incorporated into a
variety o UW-Madison courses addressing
coding and inormation theory, as well as the
reshman undergraduate course Introduction
to Societys Engineering Grand Challenges.
Draper and his team also work with the UW
Engineering Summer Program to promote
STEM elds to high-school students.
8/8/2019 2008-2009 ECE News
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ECE NEWS4
Adam Hughes(right)with University o Monterrey, Mexico, student Cesar Suarez(left)andECE senior Nate Kautzer(center)pictured with a vertical axis turbine.
(Continued from front page)faCULtY NeWsstUDeNt NeWs
Adam Hughes is guided by the wind,
and his interest in renewable energy
has taken him to New Zealand,
the Bahamas and a basement laboratory in
Engineering Hall.
The ECE senior is currently at work on an
independent study project on vertical axis
wind turbines under Associate Proessor Giri
Venkataramanan and the Wisconsin Electric
Machines and Power Electronics Consortium.
Hughes is researching and testing optimal
designs or inexpensive, low-power wind
turbines that can be installed in rural areas
o developing countries.
His project is a culmination o our years
o experience with renewable energy
technologies and rural communities.
I you nd something you love, you have
to take the initiative to
nd opportunities and
learn about what youenjoy, he says. I have
maximized my opportu-
nities in order to learn
as much as I can within my eld.
Hughes, a Madison, Wisconsin, native,
began his engineering education ocused
on computers. He credits the University o
Wisconsin Hooers Club with his transition
to renewable energyhe joined the outdoor
group as a reshman and was infuenced by
other members with strong environmentalist
belies. To learn more about how engineering
could benet the environment, Hughes joinedthe Future Energy Challenge competition. He
also became an active member o Engineers
Without Borders and Business Action or
Sustainable Enterprise, where he worked on
biodiesel engineering and advocacy projects.
It was great experience, he says o his
involvement with the student organizations,
especially Future Energy Challenge. I had a
lot o exposure to renewable energy system
design as a whole.
In all 2006, Hughes studied abroad in
New Zealand, where he joined the organization
World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms,
which pairs volunteers with armers who need
help with sustainable agriculture and design
projects. Hughes branched out rom his
biodiesel background and worked on a small
hydroelectric power project.
His experience working with local commu-
nity members to implement power systems
was useul when Hughes returned rom New
Zealand and took a co-op with Madison Gas
and Electric upgrading rural power systems.
The part I enjoyed most was being able to
travel to the countryside, meet Wisconsins
local armers and work together with them
to ensure sae and reliable access to electricity
on their land, he says.
Ater his co-op, Hughes traveled again
to work on renewable energy technologies.
He joined Cape Systems Limited, an
environmental advocacy and consulting
rm aliated with the Island School in theBahamas. Hughes was part o solar and
wind energy systems or residential and
small commercial clients and helped maintain
and upgrade turbines or the school.
When Hughes returned to UW-Madison
in all 2008, he looked or opportunities to
conduct an independent study project in
renewable energies. He met Venkataramanan,
who put him to work on the vertical axis
project in spring 2009.
The project began when an entrepreneur in
Kenya connected with Madison-based product
development company Design Concepts to
create low-cost, low-power turbines or
terrain with unsteady air fow less than ideal
or traditional wind turbines. Design Concepts
contacted Venkataramanan, who then involved
Hughes in the project.
Traditional turbines, like the giant ones in
western and southern United States, have
a horizontal axis o rotation that is parallel
with the ground. When the direction o the
wind changes, the whole turbine turns, or
Independent study and travelpower a passion for renewable energy
yaws, to ace into the wind. Alternatively,
vertical axis turbines, which have vertical
rotor shats and thereore a perpendicular
axis o rotation, can collect wind rom any
direction without turning. This means the
vertical turbines can be implemented in a
wider variety o terrains and dont waste
energy on yawing.
Our project is aimed at people who dont
have electricity at all and would like a ewlights in their home or want to charge a cell
phone, Hughes says. It really needs to be
aordable and simple to construct.
Ater his independent
study project, Hughes
will ocus on
wrapping up his
undergraduate
education and
graduate in
December
2009. He
is currently
exploring both
graduate school
and employment
options in renew-
able energy.
8/8/2019 2008-2009 ECE News
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ECE N5
as an undergraduate, which made his senior
year victory all the more special. During hissophomore year, Beck and our other students
ounded UW Innovators, an organization that
pools talents to help inventors develop their
ideas. He was also an exhibitor at Engineering
EXPO 2007 and 2009.
Beck worked as an intern or Google,
Microsot, Mechantronics and Cuna Mutual
Group, which gave him the condence to ound
his own sotware company, PerBlue. PerBlue
is working on a variety o projects, including a
Congts to 2009 cipints of pstigious Ging ws
video game called Parallel Kingdom, and more
than 42,000 user accounts or the game have
already been opened.Becks commitment to innovation and
entrepreneurship is exactly the kind o spirit
Richard Schoos (BSChE 53), the ounder and
sponsor o the Schoos Prize, hopes Innovation
Day attracts. I youre creative and enjoy what
youre doing, you dont have to worry about
nances because they seem to roll in, says
Schoos. Well have couple o millionaires
assuming Proactive Sleep is approved by
Apple or sale in the application store.
On April 14, 2009, nearly 50 UW-Madison engineering aculty, sta, students, riends
and amily members gathered or a banquet at the University o Wisconsin Foundation.
A celebration o recipients, the
event honored nine electrical and computer engineering students who already are makingmeaningul contributions in their eld. Sponsored by The Grainger Foundation, the awards
recognize students or their academic success in the eld o power engineering. Pictured
(back row, from left): College o Engineering Dean Paul Peercy, Marcus Hammonds,
Robert Sandy, Andrew Redon, Adam Anders and Jonathan Lee; (front row)Adam Hughes,
Zeb Breuckman, Brenton Smith and Jerey Gobeli.
he past year has
been a dynamic
one or Associate
Proessor Zhenqiang (Jack) Ma.
In December, Ma was among
67 researchers honored with aPresidential Early Career Awards
or Scientists and Engineers (PECASE) at a
White House ceremony.
The annual PECASE awards honor the
most promising researchers in the United
States based on nominations by nine ederal
departments and agencies. Ma, nominated
by the Department o Deense or his leading-
edge fexible electronics research, will receive
$1 million over ve years to continue his
work with nanomembrane-based fexible
electronics, with emphasis on nanophotonic
devices that detect or emit light.
In January, Ma and colleagues Max Lagally,
a proessor in Materials Science & Engineering,
and University o Michigan Proessor Pallab
Bhattacharya were eatured on the cover o
Applied Physics Letters. The trio has developed
a fexible light-sensitive material that could
revolutionize photography and other imaging
technologies. The group created curved
photodetectors with specially abricated
nanomembranesextremely thin, fexible
sheets o germanium, a very light-sensitive
material oten used in high-end imagingsensors. Researchers then can apply the
nanomembranes to any polymer substrate,
such as a thin, fexible piece o plastic. The
group demonstrated photodetectors curved in
one direction, but Ma hopes next to develop
hemispherical sensors.
Most recently, Ma has received a three-
year, $402,595 grant rom the Oce o Naval
Research to conduct undamental research
on graphene. Graphene, containing single
layer o carbon atoms, is a new type o
high-mobility material with promise or uture
high-speed nanoelectronics.However, the major obstacle to using
graphene in electronics applications is that it
lacks a bandgap. Current bandgap-opening
methods dramatically reduce the mobility,
meaning any devices made rom such
graphene would be slower.
Ma will use this grant to investigate a
novel method to open the bandgap and study
the undamental physical properties o the
bandgap-opened graphene.
T
a y of bkthoughs:Awards and funding for Jack Ma
INNOVATIONINSPIRA
TION TO
INVENTION
THEUNIVERSITYOF WISCO
NSIN
-MADISO
N
INNOVATION
(Continued from front page)Justin Beck
Justin Beck (let) and Daniel Gartenbergwith their frst-place winning invention,Proactive Sleep.
8/8/2019 2008-2009 ECE News
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ECE NEWS6
The February 6 issue o Institute,
the publication o IEEE, eatured
Proessor
among our new ellows. The
article highlighted Hagness medical imaging
research, particularly her use o computational
electromagnetics to develop and investigate
microwave imaging or breast tissue.
On March 10, Forbes.com
eatured microgrid technololgy
developed by Proessor Emeritus
. The microgrid
concept was one o ve trends to watch in the
2009 Clean Energy Trends report published
by market researcher Clean Edge. Microgrids,
local energy grids with their own generation
and storage, could provide all or part o the
power or a building or neighborhood and
serve as backup in case o larger grid ailures.
Currently, microgrid systems are in placeat the Sacramento, Caliornia, Municipal
Utility District, the Santa Rita Jail in Alameda
County, Caliornia, and in Wal-Mart stores.
In June, Proessor Emeritus
received the IEEE Nikola
Tesla Award as part o the 2009
IEEE Awards Presentations. The
IEEE Nikola Tesla Award recognizes Novotny
or pioneering contributions to the analysis
and understanding o AC machine dynamic
behavior and perormance in adjustable-
speed drives. This award is one o the highestproessional acclaims that a researcher can
receive rom IEEE peers. The 2009 award
winners have the special distinction o
receiving recognition on the occasion o the
125th anniversary o the IEEE.
A March 8 story in the Air Force
Timesquoted Proessor
. In the story, Female
airmen under-represented in tech
eld, Wendt pointed out that although high
school girls take as many math and science
courses as boys do, they are less likely to
continue pursue a career in technical elds.
In part, she says, its marketing: Engineering
and other technical elds oten receive
attention or being technically rigorous and
dicult, which might appeal more to men, but
actors that could appeal more to women
creativity and the ability to make a dierence
in peoples livesarent highlighted, she said.
faCULtY NeWsfaCULtY NeWs
P
Under the partnership, Vestas will provide unding support beginning this year to
as many as 10 graduate and undergraduate students working on wind technology
projects. The company also plans to provide visiting scholars to campus and start
a small research and development acility on the engineering campus.
The plans grow signicantly more ambitious over time, ultimately leading tothe ormation o a multidisciplinary center or advanced wind power technology.
Another stage o the partnership will support named proessorships or endowed
chairs with expanded ocus on wind-energy research and education. One named
proessorship will ocus on developing new curriculum materials to support the
emerging energy and sustainability elds.
The Vestas partnership is an exciting addition to the range o energy research
and education at the college, says COE Dean Paul Peercy. Once we solve energystorage issues, wind power potentially could supply as much as 20 percent o
the nations energy needs by 2030. Our students will be highly motivated to
participate in this growth industry.According to the DOE, recently unded wind-energy projects will begin to
address market and deployment challenges identied in the 2008 report,20 Percent Wind Energy by 2030. Increasing wind energy genera-
tion will be a critical actor in achieving the Obama administrations
goals or clean energy, while also supporting new green jobs.
To read more about the Vestas partnership, visit:
(Continued from front page)Vestas partnership
.
hgnsswns cng w
roessor Susan C. Hagness has received a 2009
Alliant Energy Underkofer Excellence in Teaching
Award. Four awards o $3,500 were oered to
aculty or sta rom UW System schools within the Alliant
Energy service area. Award recipients were especially selected or displaying an
uncommon commitment to teaching and eective teaching strategies, as well as
enabling ormer students to make notable achievements.
Hagness was recognized or her belie that students are more motivated tolearn i they see the relevance o the subject matter and that students learn most
eectively when they are engaged in an active learning environment that recognizes
dierent learning styles. Hagness also believes that students nd learning to be
most meaningul and enjoyable when they see their instructor as an advocate.
She has been involved in developing or revamping multiple engineering classes
in her 10 years at UW-Madison. One notable example is her Grand Challenges
course, which was developed or the COE 2010 Initiative. Grand Challenges
introduces reshmen to engineering disciplines rom the perspective o how
engineers can address the problems aced by society in the 21st century.
She also has integrated her research into the classroom by developing
computer-based educational tools or visualizing electromagnetic phenomena.
Hagness ocuses on computational and experimental applied electromagnetics,
with an emphasis on bioelectromagnetics and the development o diagnosticand therapeutic technologies or biomedical applications.
8/8/2019 2008-2009 ECE News
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ECE N7
oo-high electricity bills can leave consumers wondering i their energy providers are
cheating them. According to Associate Proessor Bernard Lesieutre, they just might be.
Lesieutre and his research group are trying to determine whether electricity suppliers
can manipulate the markets to their advantage.
Current guidelines overseeing energy markets are based on nancial models and regulations or
market share; however, those models dont take into account the physical limitations o the energy
grid. Power lines have a limited capacity or how much electricity they can carry beore they
become congested, and too much power can physically warp the cables. Even an exceptionally
hot day could reduce the amount o energy the lines can tolerate.
Because the lines cannot carry any more power, when conditions create congestion, competitors
might not be able to supply power to where its needed. As a result, one power company might
POWER STRUGGLE: avoctng fo ngy conss
n August 14, 2003, the largestelectrical blackout in U.S. history
knocked out power in the north-
eastern United States and parts o eastern
Canada. For up to our days, the outage
brought the lives o some 50 million people to a
standstill, at a cost o $4 billion to $10 billion.
Six years later, re-
searchers worldwide still
study the event, hoping
(among other things) that
the evidence will help
them identiy the perect
balance between the risko another blackout and
the reliability o a massive,
intricately interconnected
power system. Its both a very interesting
problem and an important problem to keep
the lights on and to have enough reliability
in our power system so that we can use
electricity, says Proessor Ian Dobson.
A ailure in your home electrical system
might mean that a circuit breaker trips or a
ety, says Dobson. We need reliable electricalpower, but we also need inexpensive electrical
power. And so how much do we all pay in our
electricity bills in order to pay or reliability?
Using computer models, Dobson, his
students and colleagues are studying cascad-
ing ailures at a very basic level. Even though
theyre very complicated in all the details, we
can look at blackouts and try to estimate how
big the initial disturbance was and how much,
on average, it tended to propagate, he says.
Looking at blackouts in this way is a very
high-level description, but I hope to learn inor-
mation that will help people understand the risk
o these large blackouts and help us to put
approximate numbers on how likely they are
and what are the consequences or our society.
The result might be that electrical system
operators can orecast an increased chance
o a blackout or a given time period. Those
projections, in turn, could help utilities better
determine how much to invest in adding
robustness and redundancy to the nations
transmission grid.
Tbecome the only provider
in an area or a time. I
they know or can guess
that, they can raise their
prices to make more
money, explains Lesieutre.
They know their electricity
is no longer substitutable. People cant get
their energy rom somewhere else because
the grid is overloaded.
Based on sensitivity analyses, Lesieutres
group has determined that such infation
is possible. While there are regulations or
substantial manipulation, current measures
only apply to instances where prices increase
by 300 percent or more.
Our concern is this high threshold. It
doesnt detect a lot o times when rates
are noncompetitive, says Lesieutre. Ourresearch is to come up with something with
a much ner resolution than that.
Having identied scenarios with potential
or market manipulation, the groups next step
is to develop measures to determine when
companies are taking advantage o those
scenarios. Ultimately, Lesieutre hopes to
prevent this market manipulation.
Lesieutre
use blows to prevent an overload rommelting down the whole system. Similarly,
the nations power grid is designed with
enough redundancy and robustness to handle
isolated ailures, such as a lightning strike
or even a scheduled line maintenance.
However, at the heart o a blackout are
ailures that propagate, or cascade, through-
out the power system. The distinctive thing
about cascading ailure is that one ailure
happens and it maybe weakens the system a
little bit, says Dobson. Its more likely that
the next ailure can happen ater that.
And just by chance, he says, the ailures
continue to snowball until theres a blackout.
While blackouts such as the August 2003
event can wreak havoc or days, they actually
are relatively inrequent, occurring every
couple o decades. As a result, its not
necessarily cost-eective to take measures
to eliminate them entirely. Extra transmission
lines, or example, add additional reliability
yet cost more than $1 million per mile to
construct. Theres a balance here, as a soci-
O
Dobson
FORECAST: incs chnc of blcot?
A map o theUnited States electrical grid
8/8/2019 2008-2009 ECE News
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ECE NEWS8
o study how regions o the brain
communicate, neuroscientists
oten use a technique called
electroencephalography (EEG), which reads
electrical activity in the brain through sensors
on the scalp.However, the skull and the scalp blur
these EEG readings. In addition, a multitude
o signals rom background processes
make it dicult to pinpoint electrical activity
corresponding to specic tasks. Its like
standing outside a crowded party and trying
to sort out individual conversations, says
Proessor Barry Van Veen.
Van Veen and his students use signal-
processing techniques to lter out that noise
and enable them to study how one area o
the brain infuences another (see graphic
below). The brain is active all the time, he
says. Its in the midst o that background
noise that you have to identiy a specic set
o connections associated with a task.
One research paradigm is working
memory, a type o task-oriented short-term
memory. For example, working memory
allows a person to remember a phone
number long enough to dial it, or to remem-
T
Turning down the noisehelpsresearchers listen to the brain
Proessor BarrVan Veen (cenwith students(rom let to riPatrick CheunPam Limpiti,Andrew Bolstaand Matt Rebh
Sn ss chngs n oth cosponnc to:
Department o Electrical & Computer Engineering1415 Engineering Dr.Madison, WI 53706
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ber a series o notes or pattern o shapes long enough to repeat it. Neuroscientists hypothesize that several
regions o the brain are connected in working memory tasks. Van Veen and his students use their signal-
processing techniques to identiy electrical connections rom EEG data and determine how they change
under dierent conditions, such as task diculty or recall accuracy.The group also is interested in how connectivity in the brain changes between waking and sleep,
and more complicated activity such as language processing.
Van Veen is hopeul that, as the research progresses, his methods will provide some insight into
the workings o the brain and lead to better understanding or treatment o medical conditions like
epilepsy or schizophrenia.