Ahmed Alahmed
Best Paper at IEEE PESGM 2024
Best Paper at IEEE PESGM 2024
Ahmed Alahmed
Selected to Join The 2023-2024 Cohort of ...
Selected to Join The 2023-2024 Cohort of NextGen Professors
Ahmed Alahmed
Concluded PhD Summer Researcher Internship At ...
Concluded PhD Summer Researcher Internship At NREL
Ahmed Alahmed
PhD Graduate Summer Researcher at NREL
PhD Graduate Summer Researcher at NREL
Ahmed Alahmed
MiSK Fellowship Certificate of Completion
MiSK Fellowship Certificate of Completion

Attended and Presented at the 2025 Grid Science Winter School and Conference

I recently attended the 2025 Grid Science Winter School and Conference, held from January 6–10, 2025 in Santa Fe Historic Plaza in Santa Fe, NM. This event, organized by the Center for Nonlinear Studies as Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) and supported by the U.S. Department of Energy (DoE), brings together experts, students, and postdocs to tackle some of the most pressing challenges in modern energy systems.

The program combined three days of Winter School lectures with two days of a research conference, providing a deep dive into emerging topics such as AI in energy systems, optimization, and control, as well as interdependent network resilience. The lectures were invaluable for framing theoretical concepts.

As part of my participation, I presented my research on “Resource Sharing in Energy Communities: A Cooperative Game Approach”, which analyze the overall benefits of an energy community cooperative game under which distributed energy resources (DER) are shared behind a regulated distribution utility meter under a general tariff design. The feedback I received from peers and experts alike was insightful and has inspired new directions for my work.

The event was a perfect blend of learning, collaboration, and inspiration. Beyond the technical sessions, it was exciting to connect with some of the brightest minds in energy systems, operation research and control. I’m grateful to the organizers for curating such an impactful program and fostering a strong research community around Grid Science.

Joined the SLS delegation to China

Honored to share highlights from my recent participation in the Saudi Leadership Society’s (SLS) Transformational Experience Visit to Beijing, China, organized by the Saudi Leadership Society | المجلس السعودي للقادة.

This amazing initiative brought together 24 talented Saudi leaders and offered a unique mix of activities, including visits and meetings with leading Chinese corporations such as Xiaomi Technology, Meituan, and JD.COM, as well as prestigious institutions like Tsinghua University and Peking University.

This transformative experience has provided valuable insights and perspectives that align with the goals of Saudi Vision 2030. I am deeply grateful to the Saudi Leadership Society | المجلس السعودي للقادة for curating this impactful program, and to the partners from China - Wendi Li, and his team for their exceptional leadership and execution.

News coverage
Al Arabiya:
https://shorturl.at/gShC3
Saudi Press Agency:
https://lnkd.in/eCFxTbde

Concluded the 2024 ACM SIGEnergy Seminar Series

We wrapped up the 2024 #ACM #SIGEnergy Seminar Series with an incredible finale 🎊!

John Sipple, from Google Research, delivered a great talk on an open-source, physics-based building simulator designed for rapid RL agent training.

A huge shoutout to Sanam Dabirian and Gargya Gokhale for their pivotal efforts in making this seminar series a success. Special thanks to Zoltan Nagy for his support and facilitation and to Noman Bashir for passing on the 2023 seminar series in excellent shape.

Looking ahead, the 2025 seminar series promises to feature cutting-edge research in energy systems and energy informatics. Stay tuned by joining our Google Group: https://sites.google.com/view/sigenergy-seminar/

Lastly, I’d like to extend my gratitude to all our 16 outstanding speakers whose names are listed on the seminar’s website and affiliations are listed in the picture below. Their contributions have made this series truly exceptional!

Paper Presentation at CDC 2024, Milano

I had the privilege of presenting my paper titled “Network-aware and welfare maximizing dynamic pricing for energy sharing” (arXiv) at the 63rd IEEE Conference on Decision and Control (CDC), held in Milano, Italy, from December 16 to December 19, 2024. My talk was part of a panel on “Incentives, Flexibility, and Human Factors in Large-Scale Distributed Energy Resources Control”.

I also was part of the CDC’s energy systems technical committee, which serves as the linkage between the Control Systems Society and the Power and Energy Systems Society.

ACM SIGEnergy Seminar Series: Special Session

📢 Join Us for the Final Session of the 2024 ACM, Association for Computing Machinery SIGEnergy Seminar Series!

We’re excited to wrap up this year’s ACM SIGEnergy Seminar Series with a special session on Friday, December 13th, 2024, at 11:00 AM ET.

This final seminar will feature John Sipple from Google Research, who will present an open-source, physics-based building simulator designed for rapid reinforcement learning agent training.

📅 Session Details:

Title: Open-Source Simulation: Revolutionizing Building Energy Optimization

Date: Dec. 13, 2024

Time: 11:00 AM Eastern Time (US and Canada)

Zoom Link: https://mit.zoom.us/j/93059047019

For more info about the talk, visit: https://sites.google.com/view/sigenergy-seminar/

Panel Talk at the 2024 INFORMS Annual Meeting

On October 22nd, I presented at the 2024 INFORMS Annual Meeting held in Seattle, WA. My presentation was part of an invited panel session on Data-Enabled Decision-Making in Energy Systems and Markets.

I had a great time connecting with so many people from academia and industry


Gave a Talk at Caltech (slides available)

Today, I presented our research on Network-Aware Mechanism Design for Energy Communities at Caltech for the Foundations of Algorithms, Learning, Control, and Optimization of Networks (FALCON) group and the Rigorous Systems Research Group (RSRG)!

This research focuses on optimizing resource sharing in decentralized energy communities. Our proposed two-part dynamic pricing encourages fair and efficient energy use while considering network constraints.

For more details, check out our papers:


Talk slides can be accessed here

#EnergyCommunities #MechanismDesign #Optimization #GameTheory #OptimalDecisions

Presented at NREL's Autonomous Energy Systems Workshop, Golden, CO

I recently had the opportunity to attend NREL's 7th workshop on Autonomous Energy Systems, held from September 3rd to September 6th, 2024 in Golden, CO. During the workshop, I presented my recent research on "Resource sharing in energy communities: A cooperative game approach," where I explored innovative strategies for energy collaboration within communities. The event was a fantastic platform for exchanging ideas and advancing research in autonomous energy systems.

Celebrating My Ph.D. Defense! 🎉

I successfully defended my dissertation, titled "Integration of Distributed Energy Resources: Optimal Decisions, Mechanism Design, and Aggregations," at the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE), Cornell University.

This milestone would not have been possible without the incredible guidance and support of my advisor, Prof. Lang Tong, and my committee members, Prof. Eilyan Bitar and Prof. Timothy Mount. Their mentorship, expertise, and encouragement throughout this journey have been invaluable.

Excited for the next chapter ahead and grateful for all the support along the way! 🌟

Manuscript accepted @IEEE Transactions on Control of Network Systems

Our paper entitled “A Decentralized Market Mechanism for Energy Communities under Operating Envelopes” has been accepted for publication at the IEEE Transactions on Control of Network Systems.

This paper generalizes the Dynamic Net Energy Metering (D-NEM) pricing, first presented here, to communities that are subject to operating envelopes. Interestingly, we found that D-NEM becomes two-part, consisting of: (i) a dynamic threshold-based price, and (ii) a fixed charge.

The abstract of the paper is given below:

We propose an operating envelopes (OEs) aware energy community market mechanism that dynamically charges/rewards its members based on two-part pricing. The OEs are imposed exogenously by a regulated distribution system operator (DSO) on the energy community's revenue meter and is subject to a generalized net energy metering (NEM) tariff design. By formulating the interaction of the community operator and its members as a Stackelberg game, we show that the proposed two-part pricing achieves a Nash equilibrium and maximizes the community's social welfare in a decentralized fashion while ensuring that the community's operation abides by the OEs. The market mechanism conforms with the cost-causation principle and guarantees community members a surplus level no less than their maximum surplus when they autonomously face the DSO. The dynamic and uniform community price is a monotonically decreasing function of the community's aggregate renewable generation. We also analyze the impact of exogenous parameters such as NEM rates and OEs on the value of joining the community. Lastly, through numerical studies, we showcase the community's welfare, and pricing, and compare its members' surplus to customers under the DSO's regime.

Update About ACM SIGEnergy Graduate Seminar Series

Last month, we celebrated record attendance at the ACM SIGEnergy Graduate Student Seminar. This achievement reflects our community's engagement and commitment to advancing the field.

We invite you to join us for future seminars. To stay updated and participate, please visit the seminar's website.

https://sites.google.com/view/sigenergy-seminar/#

You can also sign up to present in upcoming talks through the designated form:

https://forms.gle/WmFLzdTk3iDtCbbt5

Your participation enriches our discussions and helps drive collaboration within the energy sector. We look forward to seeing you at our next seminar!

Paper Accepted at CDC 24, Milano, Italy

Our paper on “Network-Aware and Welfare-Maximizing Dynamic Pricing for Energy Sharing” is accepted for presentation and publication in the proceedings of the 2024 63rd IEEE Conference on Decision and Control (CDC) in Milan, Italy. The paper will be presented under the session “Incentives, Flexibility, and Human Factors in Large-Scale Distributed Energy Resources Control”.

The online manuscript can be found on arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2404.02458

Presented at IEEE PESGM 2024, Seattle, WA

I recently attended the IEEE Power and Energy Society General Meeting 2024 (PESGM 24) and had the honor of presenting at the Best Paper Session of “Emerging Technologies in Generation, Transmission, and Distribution”. I also participated in the evening poster session. PESGM 2024 was a remarkable opportunity to engage with researchers, industry experts, and professionals in the field of power and energy.


The paper’s arXiv can be found here, and the poster I presented can be found here.





Manuscript Accepted @IEEE Transactions on Sustainable Energy

Our manuscript titled "Co-Optimizing Distributed Energy Resources in Linear Complexity under Net Energy Metering" has been accepted for publication in the IEEE Transactions on Sustainable Energy [Early Access]

Paper abstract:

The co-optimization of behind-the-meter distributed energy resources is considered for prosumers under the net energy metering tariff. The distributed energy resources considered include renewable generations, flexible demands, and battery energy storage systems. An energy management system co-optimizes the consumptions and battery storage based on locally available stochastic renewables by solving a stochastic dynamic program that maximizes the expected operation surplus. To circumvent the exponential complexity of the dynamic program solution, we propose a closed-form and linear computation complexity co-optimization algorithm based on a relaxation-projection approach to a constrained stochastic dynamic program. Sufficient conditions for optimality for the proposed solution are obtained. Numerical studies demonstrate orders of magnitude reduction of computation costs and significantly reduced optimality gap.

The arXiv version of the manuscript can be found at: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2208.09781

Attended ARPA-E Energy Innovation Summit (Student Program and NSF I-Corps)

I attended the ARPA-E 2024 Energy Innovation summit in Dallas, TX, as part of the ARPA-E student program. Additionally, I was also part of the I-Corps (Innovative Corps) program funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF). The mission of I-Corps is to bridge the gap between fundamental research discoveries in science and engineering and the commercialization of technologies, products, and processes with the potential to benefit society. With the support of I-Corps, we explored the business potential of our startup “EnergyGPT”, including customer discovery.

Presented at the Northeast Systems and Control Workshop 2024

On May 4th, I presented our work on “Decentralized Welfare Optimization for Energy Communities” at the 2024 Northeast Systems and Control Workshop, which was held at the University of Pennsylvania. The workshop was a great opportunity to reconnect with researchers and share latest research developments and discuss possible collaborations.

Our poster can be downloaded from here:

NESCW 2024 POSTER

Organizing SIGEnergy Graduate Student Seminar Series

Alongside some colleagues, I am organizing the SIGEnergy Graduate Student Seminar series this year.

If you are a MSc/PhD/Postdoc or even a faculty and would like to present any of your published work (see scope below) to a group of graduate students and postdocs from all over the world, please fill the following signup form:


SIGEnergy Scope

SIGEnergy covers a broad range of topics in energy informatics, energy system design, analysis, and operation ranging from building energy management, renewable energy modelling and integration, energy storage system analysis, electric vehicle modelling and optimal operation, data-centre energy management, and energy impact on climate and society.

Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions.