News

Congratulations to ENTAIL PhD student Fathima Razeeya Mohamed Razick —her review article has been selected as the Cover Story for Volume 15, Issue 2 of Computers (MDPI) . The paper synthesizes deep learning approaches for short-circuit fault diagnostics, spanning CNNs, RNNs, Graph Neural Networks, and hybrid architectures . It provides a clear roadmap for building robust, intelligent fault management in evolving power distribution grids with distributed energy resources. Read the Open-Access Article Source Post (LinkedIn)

Recordings and presentation files from Workshop 2025 can now be accessed on the Workshop page.

Modern DC Transmission System Technologies Dr. Gregory Kish

Next-Generation Power Systems Dr. Yize Chen

The 2025 Alberta Power Industry Consortium (APIC) Forum convened leaders, innovators, and stakeholders across Alberta’s power and energy sectors. The event was held jointly with the Resilient and Clean Energy Systems (RCES) initiative, featuring keynotes from APIC member companies and a panel discussion on policy, regulation, and future grid priorities.

Presentations, recordings, posters, and agenda overview.

AI and Energy — plenary technical discussion.

EPCOR, ATCO, FortisAlberta, ENMAX, AltaLink.

Materials from the APIC Forum 2023 are available, including presentations/recordings, posters, and the full agenda. Keynotes and updates covered topics such as DERMS implementation, grid-forming inverters, microgrids, and large-scale solar interconnections.

DERMS, microgrids, grid-forming inverters, urban solar

EPCOR, ENMAX, AltaLink, FortisAlberta, AESO, ATCO

The Energy Hackathon 2023 was held at the University of Alberta (DICE building) and featured hands-on workshops, team formation, drop-in Q&A sessions, an overnight build sprint, and final presentations.

Level 8, DICE building (North Campus, UAlberta)

Plotly Dash + AI & Data Science Hierarchy of Needs

Workshop 2022 resources include the presentation PDF and two recording parts. Access the full page for downloads and recording links (recordings use the same password as the original page).

Presentation + recordings (Part 1 & Part 2)

Students from Electrical & Computer Engineering (University of Alberta) won the APIC Energy Hackathon 2022 with a “smart electric vehicle charging” concept, developed during an intensive weekend build sprint. The event brought together 27 students across multiple time zones, collaborating virtually to deliver solutions.

Nastaran Gholizadeh, Chloe Zhou, Vadim Avkhimenia, Amirhossein Sohrabbeig

AI4Society, ISAIC, Future Energy Systems, Energy Systems Signature Area (UAlberta)

The APIC Forum 2022 convened industrial and academic partners of the Alliance Grant project Towards Future Interconnected Electric System , with keynotes from APIC companies and research updates from University of Alberta and University of Calgary trainees and faculty.

Company keynotes + research/HQP project updates

DER interconnections, electrification, automation, operations challenges

Dr. Lianne Lefsrud and her team shared a research-informed overview of risk management systems and resiliency principles that support process safety and occupational/public safety across electricity generation and distribution. The session highlighted both obvious and non-obvious hazards, what can blind organizations to emerging risks, and how better identification, prevention, and mitigation can be enabled through data analytics, AI/ML, and failure-mode visualization— illustrated using the February 2021 Texas ice storm as a resiliency case study.

Risk management systems & resiliency principles

Analytics/AI, visualization of failure modes, integrated management systems

February 2021 Texas ice storm (resiliency improvements)

Undergraduate students Mohamed Hamouda and Freddy Borja Laverde (ECE, University of Alberta) won the inaugural APIC Energy Hackathon with Charger4Share —a concept for helping EV drivers discover charging options across Alberta, particularly in regions with limited dedicated charging infrastructure.

5 finalist teams; intensive weekend sprint

AI4Society, ISAIC, Future Energy Systems, UAlberta

ECE doctoral student Nastaran Gholizadeh has just published a Review of Distributed Learning Applications in Power Systems in MDPI Energies. Working with professor Petr Musilek, they provide an overview of distributed learning architectures, survey the most important applications of this modern machine learning approach, and identify the most significant gaps and challenges for future research.

Their open-access article can be accessed here: https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/14/12/3654

In recent years, machine learning methods have found numerous applications in power systems for load forecasting, voltage control, power quality monitoring, anomaly detection, etc. Distributed learning is a subfield of machine learning and a descendant of the multi-agent systems field. Distributed learning is a collaboratively decentralized machine learning algorithm designed to handle large data sizes, solve complex learning problems, and increase privacy. Moreover, it can reduce the risk of a single point of failure compared to fully centralized approaches and lower the bandwidth and central storage requirements. This paper introduces three existing distributed learning frameworks and reviews the applications that have been proposed for them in power systems so far. It summarizes the methods, benefits, and challenges of distributed learning frameworks in power systems and identifies the gaps in the literature for future studies.

The annual IEEE Canada Power and Energy Conference (EPEC) for 2020 is being delivered virtually this week. On Thursday (Nov 12) afternoon, EPEC will be hosting a Women in Engineering (WiE) Panel Session and General Co-Chairs Petr Musilek and Alexandre Nassif would like to open this session to the broader community. This exciting round-table discussion will take place 12:30–14.00 MST on Nov 12.

Moderator: Ivan Fair (Professor and Chair, Electrical and Computer Engineering, UAlberta) Panelists: Dr. Lianne Lefsrud, P.Eng. (Assistant Professor and Director Outreach, Chemical and Materials Engineering, UAlberta), Terri-Lynn Duque (Director, Strategic Innovation, Enmax) Monique Schluff Soboren (Sr. Standards and Projects Engineer, FortisAlberta), Jeanie Chin (Manager, Centre of Grid Innovation, NAIT), Raymond Matthias (Strategic Advisor to Associate Dean /Outreach, Faculty of Engineering, UAlberta)

A team of researchers from UAlberta and UCalgary has been awarded a $4.2M NSERC Alliance grant titled “Towards Future Interconnected Electric System”. Led by ECE professor Petr Musilek, the interdisciplinary team of 16 researchers will be joined by more than 60 students to conduct research under the following four themes: System Modeling and Artificial Intelligence for Power Systems (Petr Musilek, Lori Thorlakson, Tim Weis, Hamid Zareipour), Advanced Power Electronics for the Smart Grid (Greg Kish, Qing Zhao, S. Ali Khajehoddin, John Salmon), Grid Integration of Renewable and Distributed Energy (Ryan (Yunwei) Li, Andy Knight, Wilsun Xu, Omid Ardakanian), and Safety and Security for the Smart Grid (Hao Liang, Dr. Lianne Lefsrud, P.Eng., Yindi Jing, Marek Reformat).

The 5-year project builds on partnership with the major players in Alberta’s power industry: AESO, AltaLink, ATCO Electric, ENMAX, EPCOR and FortisAlberta. The Alberta Power Industry Consortium (APIC) built a decade ago by Wilsun Xu, has an established track record of helping the industry solve current problems and developing a vision for the future. The research team will also collaborate with the Alberta Machine Intelligence Institute (Amii) and the E. ON Energy Research Center, RWTH Aachen University, Germany.