Liang Min

Bio

As the Managing Director of the Bits & Watts Initiative at Stanford University, Dr. Liang Min leads a multidisciplinary affiliates program that brings together experts from various fields to drive the digital transformation of the electric grid. Under his leadership, Bits & Watts launched new research areas: 100% Clean Electric Grid, EV50, AI for Climate/Energy, and Digital Grid – an open platform for customer DERs integration. In addition to his role at Bits & Watts, Dr. Min is the Managing Director of the newly established Net-Zero Alliance, which provides a platform for global companies to collaborate with Stanford on research and education focused on achieving a net-zero future. He also spearheaded the launch of the Stanford Energy Executive Education Program, designed to equip industry leaders with the knowledge and skills to navigate the evolving energy landscape.

Dr. Min's career began at the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), where he was a senior project manager and significantly contributed to improving the electric grid's reliability and security. His work resulted in multiple U.S. patents for deploying phasor measurement unit technologies at utilities, supported by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. He then spent a decade at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, where he served as the founding group leader of the energy delivery group and associate program leader for the national lab's cyber and infrastructure resilience program. He has also served as Research Director of the Electric Operations program for the California Energy System for the 21st Century, an initiative to apply the country's most sophisticated high-performance computing technology to enhance California's grid reliability, security, and value to ratepayers.

In his spare time, he is a runner with the personal best marathon time of 2 hours and 50 minutes.

Current Role at Stanford

Managing Director for the Bits and Watts Initiative, Precourt Institute for Energy
Managing Director for the Net-Zero Alliance, Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability

Education & Certifications

• Ph.D, Texas A&M University (2007)
• M.S., Tianjin University (2004)
• B.S., Tianjin University (2001)

Projects

• Hierarchical Engine for Large-scale Infrastructure Co-Simulation (HELICS), Department of Energy (4/1/2016 - 3/31/2019)

  Our flexible and scalable open-source co-simulation framework is designed to integrate simulators designed for separate TDC domains to simulate regional and interconnection-scale power system behaviors at unprecedented levels of detail and speed. The target is to scale up to linking a 50,000-node transmission system with millions of distribution nodes, coupled with 100,000 communication points. This simulation should enable planning studies in a turnaround time of minutes to hours, instead of days with today's simulation technologies, a speedup of 50 to 100 times — a feat not previously done before.
  
  This comprehensive TDC simulation tool is fundamental for investment decision-making by industry. It's also important to help quantify the impact of the ever-increasing high penetration variable generation on power grid reliability and resiliency.

  Location

  Livermore, CA

  Collaborators

  • Henry Huang, Chief Engineer, Pacific Northwest National Lab
  • Jason Fuller, Group Manager, PNNL
  • Bryan Palmintier, Manager, NREL
  • Manish Mohanpurkar, Engineer, INL

  For More Information:

  • Project Fact Sheet
  • Tech Transfer Success Story
• Multi-Scale Integration of Control Systems (EMS/DMS/BMS), Department of Energy (4/1/2016 - 4/1/2019)

  The current approach to electric power system operations and controls was developed during the last three to four decades using a piecemeal approach, within narrow functional silos, and well before the development of modern computational capabilities. The rapid growth of renewable power generation, the increased use of electric vehicles, and the growing need to integrate customers with the power system are rendering the current generation of grid operating systems obsolete.
  
  This project creates an integrated grid management framework akin to having an autopilot system for the grid's interconnected components — from central and distributed energy resources at bulk power systems and distribution systems, to local control systems for energy networks, including building management systems.

  Location

  Livermore, CA

  Collaborators

  • Mark Rice, Engineer, PNNL
  • Yingcheng Zhang, Manager, NREL
  • Cesar A. Silva-Monroy, Engineer, SNL
  • Sidhant Misra, Engineer, LANL
  • Zhi Zhou Zhou, Engineer, ANL

  For More Information:

  • Project Site
• Unified Remedial Action Scheme (RAS) Modeling and Simulation Tool for Grid Resiliency, Bonneville Power Administration (10/1/2016 - 3/31/2018)

  Traditionally, RAS is modeled as specialized scripts or as events as part of the contingency in software tools like PSLF or PSS/E. WECC launched an effort to develop common file format for RAS so that different software tools can read and write the RAS models from the WECC common file format. This will enable utilities using different software products to exchange the same RAS models and model them properly. GE worked with WECC to support the common RAS file format in PSLF. The
  initial WECC efforts were focused on steady state RAS models only The project team will extend the ongoing WECC RAS
  efforts to transient stability and build the framework to simulate steady state RAS models in transient stability in PSLF.

  Location

  Livermore, CA

  Collaborators

  • Edison Elizeh, Corporate Strategy, BPA
  • Brain Thomas, Manager, General Electric
  • Ramu RAmanathan, CEO, Maxisys
• DER Siting and Optimization Tool for California, Department of Energy (4/1/2016 - 3/31/2018)

  This project will deliver to the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC), California Investor Owned Utilities (IOUs) and other relevant stakeholders, an integrated distributed resource planning and optimization platform, hosted online, able to identify meaningful behind-the-meter Distributed Energy Resources (DER) adoption patterns, potential microgrid sites and demand-side resources, and evaluate the impacts of high renewable penetration feeders on the distribution and transmission grid.

  Location

  Livermore, CA

  Collaborators

  • John Grosh, Deputy Associate Director, LLNL
  • Goncalo Cardoso, Engineer, LBNL
  • Sila Kiliccote, Group Leader, SLAC
  • Anthony Florita, Engineer, NREL
  • Robert Lofaro, Manager, BNL
  • Jianhui Wang, Manager, ANL
• Large-Scale Integrated Electric-Transmission and Distribution-Grid Dynamic Simulation, Lawrence Livermore National Lab (10/1/2012 - 9/30/2015)

  Tomorrow’s electric grid will increasingly include renewable resources and electric energy storage in both transmission (delivering power from generation to distribution circuits) and distribution (delivering power from distribution circuits to consumers). This electric grid will require simulations that can ensure reliable long-term operation of an extremely complex system comprised of millions of distributed units. We have developed the first platform in the power energy community supporting large-scale integrated transmission and distribution systems simulation. We created a modeling and simulation tool that can be used for integrated analysis of transmission, distribution, and communication networks. A high-performance coupled transmission and distribution simulator was developed for electric-power-grid simulation, and two case studies were conducted to evaluate the performance of the simulator.

  Location

  Lawrence Livermore National Lab

  Collaborators

  • Carol Woodward, Project Leader Center for Applied Scientific Computing, Lawrence Livermore National Lab
  • Steve Smith, Staff scientist, Lawrence Livermore National Lab
  • Philip Top, Staff Engineer, Lawrence Livermore National Lab
  • Brian Kelley, Engineer, Lawrence Livermore National Lab
  • Yining Qin, Engineer, Lawrence Livermore National Lab
  • Mert Korkali, Postdoc, Lawrence Livermore National Lab

  For More Information:

  • Project Report (External)
• Probabilistic Transmission Congestion Forecasting, California Institute for Energy and Environment (3/1/2006 - 3/1/2008)

  Location

  Palo Alto, CA

  Collaborators

  • Stephen Lee, Technical Executive, EPRI

  For More Information:

  • Project Final Report
• Fast Fault Screening for Real-Time Transient Stability Assessment, NYSERDA (10/1/2006 - 9/30/2010)

  Location

  Palo Alto, CA

  Collaborators

  • Stephen Lee, Technical Executive, EPRI
  • Marianna Vaiman, COO, V&R Energy System Research, Inc

  For More Information:

  • Project Final Report

Patents

• Liang Min, Nan Duan. "United States Patent Appl. No.: 16/997872 Voltage Stability Smart Meter", Lawrence Livermore National Security, LLC, Aug 19, 2020
• Liang Min, Can Huang. "United States Patent Appl. No.: 16/988,171 SYNCHRONIZED ELECTRIC METER HAVING AN ATOMIC CLOCK", Lawrence Livermore National Security, LLC, Aug 7, 2020
• Xiao Chen, Can Huang, Liang Min, Charanraj Thimmisetty, Charles Tong. "United States Patent United States Patent Appl. No.: 16/721588 Computational framework for modeling of physical process", Lawrence Livermore National Security, LLC, Jun 25, 2020
• Pei Zhang, Liang Min, Jian Chen. "United States Patent US8126667B2 Measurement based voltage stability monitoring and control", Electric Power Research Institute, Feb 28, 2012
• Pei Zhang, Liang Min, Nan Zhang. "United States Patent US7603203B2 Method for voltage instability load shedding using local measurements", Electric Power Research Institute, Oct 13, 2009

Personal Interests

In his spare time, he is an avid marathoner.