Mohsen Rahmani

Advisor(s):

Paulina Jaramillo and Gabriela Hug

Research Project Description:
I am involved in a multi-disciplinary research projects to analyze the effects of the US environmental protection agency (EPA) and integration of renewable energy sources on the reliability, security and economic of US electric system. More specifically, I am using the security constraint unit commitment to determine how the reliability and electricity prices will be affected as a result of coal power plants retirement and integration of wind energy sources. For this project I am analyzing the PJM system, as the world's largest competitive wholesale electricity market, with thousands of generators, transmission lines and buses. Due to the immense size of the PJM system this project needs advanced programming techniques and intelligent use of the existing optimization software.

The EPA has adopted very stringent regulations to lower the emissions of the coal power plants. Those generators that can not comply with these regulations would be retired. In the PJM region alone, more than 16 GW of the electrical generating capacity are set to retire by 2017. Some argue that the energy prices would soar and the security and reliability of the US grid would be compromised if the retirements taking place. However, there are no or a few studies that measure these issues. In a research project sponsored by ( National Energy Technology Laboratory -NETL) we want to measure how the retirements would affect the Security, reliability and energy prices and then suggest some mitigation strategies to avoid aforementioned problems. This research is of significant interest to the Department of Energy (DOE), EPA and national energy planning bureaus.

Research Interests:Energy systems optimization and modeling, Power systems planning and operation, Power systems reliability and security, Integration of Renewable energy sources into the power systems.

Publications:

Journal Publications

Rahmani, M. ; Vinasco, G.; Rider, M.J.; Romero, R.; Multistage Transmission Expansion Planning Considering Fixed Series Compensation Allocation, IEEE Transactions on Power Systems, vol.28, no.4, pp.3795,3805, Nov. 2013.

Rahmani, M. ; Romero, R.; Rider, M.j.;, M.; Risk/Investment-Driven Transmission Expansion Planning with Multiple Scenarios, IET Generation, Transmission & Distribution vol.28, no.3, pp.2164,2173, Aug. 2013.

Rahmani, M. ; Romero, R.; Rider, M.j.; Strategies to Reduce the Number of Variables and the Combinatorial Search Space of the Multistage Transmission Expansion Planning Problem, IEEE Transactions on Power Systems, vol.28, no.3, pp.2164,2173, Aug. 2013.

Rahmani, M. ; Rashidinejad, M. ; Carreno, E.M. ; Romero, R. Efficient Method for AC Transmission Network Expansion Planning. Electric Power Systems Research, vol. 80, pp. 1056-1064, 2010.

Rahmani, M.; Rashidinejad.; Integrated AC Transmission Network Expansion and Reactive Power Planning. Iranian Journal of Science & Technology, Transaction B, Engineering, Vol. 35, No. E2, pp 127-140, 2011.

M. Zeinaddini ; Rashidinejad M. ; Khorasani, H. ; Rahmani, M. ; Mahmoudabadi, A. An Implementation of Modified Scatter Search Algorithm to Transmission Expansion Planning. Turk J Elec Eng & Comp Sci, vol. 20, no. 1, pp.1206-1219, 2012.

Mahmoudabadi, A.; Rashidinejad, M.; Zeinaddini. M.; Rahmani, M. : An implementation of AC model to transmission expansion planning considering reliability constraints, Turk. J. Elec. Eng. & Comp. Sci., no 21, pp. 1120-1133, 2013.

Conference Publications

Rahmani, M.; Romero, R.; Rider, J.; and Paredes, M; Domain Reduction Using GRASP Construction Phase for Transmission Expansion Planning Problem. In: Evolutionary Computation in Combinatorial Optimization. vol. 7245, J.-K. Hao and M. Middendorf, Eds., ed: Springer Berlin / Heidelberg, 2012, pp. 87-98.

Rahmani, M. ; Rashidinejad, M. ; Carreno, E.M. ; Romero, R. A Combinatorial Approach for Transmission Expansion & reactive Power Planning. In: IEEE/PES 2010 T&D Latin America Conference and Exposition, São Paulo. IEEE/PES 2010 T&D Latin America Conference and Exposition, 2010.

Rahmani, M ; Rashidinejad, M. ; Carreno, E.M. ; Romero, R. Evolutionary multi-move path-relinking for transmission network expansion planning. In: Power and Energy Society General Meeting, IEEE, 2010.

Zeinaddini M.; Rashidinejad. M.; Mohammadian. M; Khorasani. H., Rahmani. M; An application of a Modified Constructive Heuristic Algorithm to Transmission Expansion Planning, IEEE PES Trondheim PowerTech, 2011 .

Rahmani, M. Romero, R.; Rider, M.j.; Rashidinejad, M; Bounded Dual Simplex Algorithm and its Application to Transmission Expansion Planning. International Federation of Operational Research Societies (IFORS2011), 2011.

M. Zeinaddini ; Rashidinejad, M. ; Mohammadian, M. ; Rahmani, M. An Application of Scatter Search Algorithm to TEP Problems. In: fifth Global Conference on Power Control and Optimization PCO, Kuching, 2011.

Khorasani, H. ; Rashidinejad, M. ; Rahmani, M. Transmission Expansion Planning in Restructured Electricity Industry Via Hybrid Heuristic Technique. In: Global Conference on Power Control and Optimization PCO, Kuching, 2011.

Rahmani, M. ; Rashidinejad, M. ; Gharaveisi, A. ; Mohammadian, M. Transmission network expansion planning using ac model via real GA. In: Global Conference on Power Control and Optimization PCO, 2008, Chiang May.

Da silva E.F. ; Rahmani M. ; Rider M.J.; Transmission Expansion Planning with Security Constraints, ( in Portuguese) XIX Congresso Brasileiro de Automática – CBA, Paraíba, Camna grande, Brazil, 2012.

Lima, A.; Rahmani, M.; Scatter search for transmission expansion planning. (in Portuguese) In: IV Simpósio Brasileiro de Sistemas Elétricos – SBSE . Goiânia, Goiás, Brazil, 2012.

Awards/Fellowships:

São Paulo Research Foundation – FAPESP- Doctorate Scholarship, 2009 – 2012.
São Paulo Research Foundation – FAPESP- Grant for visiting University of Florida.
Carnegie Mellon University – Post-Doctoral Fellowship Grant, June 2013-Current.