Dominic Gross
University of Wisconsin-Madison, WI·Engineering·Early-career
Electric grids were built around large spinning generators that naturally steady the grid's voltage and frequency. As solar, wind and batteries take over, more power flows through power electronics: electronic converters, called inverters, that turn the direct current from panels and batteries into grid-ready alternating current.
- Fields
Engineering
- Topics
grid-forming control
GFM inverters
power electronics
- Grants
- 2 known grants, through Jul 2029
What they work on
- Develop a control design and stability analysis framework for grid-forming inverters that explicitly accounts for the static and dynamic limits of power electronics and renewable generation in zero-carbon power systems.
- Prevent adverse interactions between controls and grid physics that act on overlapping millisecond-to-second time scales, using new models and optimization-based control paradigms for grid-connected converters.
- Design control techniques that make vast numbers of distributed power-electronic devices behave collaboratively and autonomously pool their flexibility, reducing the need for centralized grid coordination.
- Use a grid-forming battery inverter as an in-field probing source, together with monitoring through existing parallel controllers, to measure input-output transfer functions of microgrid components such as legacy diesel generators.
- Derive analytical stability conditions for closely coupled, similarly sized diesel generators and inverters, then shape their combined dynamics with active damping, validated on a 500 kW laboratory test bed.
More about the research
These devices respond in milliseconds and have strict limits on current and energy. Without careful control, they can interact with each other and with older equipment, causing oscillations or instability. This instability currently limits how much renewable power a grid can safely use. The lab studies how to control inverters so that grids dominated by them stay stable. One project builds general theory for large power systems; the other tackles a practical problem in small, isolated grids.
Why it matters
This work could help power grids run reliably on much higher shares of renewable energy, supporting decarbonization and better resilience to and recovery from severe weather. For rural and remote communities that pay some of the nation's highest electricity prices, on-site tuning of battery controls could cut diesel use and lower energy costs. Small utilities could also safely add battery storage without expertise they rarely have.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Wencong Su
University of Michigan-Dearborn, MI·Engineering
Build a fundamental understanding of the practical challenges facing low-inertia power grids with high penetration of grid-forming inverter-based energy resources, which set grid voltage and frequency themselves.
Javad Khazaei
Lehigh University, PA·Engineering·Early-career
Learn low-dimensional manifolds from time-series measurements of distributed energy resources and use them for real-time predictive control of voltage, frequency and power sharing in microgrids.
Shuhui Li
University of Alabama, AL·Engineering
Develop permanent magnets for offshore wind turbines that do not rely on rare-earth materials, which reduces supply chain limits.
The school
University of Wisconsin-Madison: 91 labs on PI Pages, $1.9B a year on research, 854 research doctorates a year.
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