Physics-guided Residual Learning for Probabilistic Power Flow Analysis

Probabilistic power flow (PPF) analysis is critical to power system operation and planning. PPF aims at obtaining probabilistic descriptions of the state of the system with stochastic power injections (e.g., renewable power generation and load demands). Given power injection samples, numerical methods repeatedly run classic power flow (PF) solvers to find the voltage phasors. However, the computational burden is heavy due to many PF simulations. Recently, many data-driven based PF solvers have been proposed due to the availability of sufficient measurements. This paper proposes a novel neural network (NN) framework which can accurately approximate the non-linear AC-PF equations. The trained NN works as a rapid PF solver, significantly reducing the heavy computational burden in classic PPF analysis. Inspired by residual learning, we develop a fully connected linear layer between the input and output in the multilayer perceptron (MLP). To improve the NN training convergence, we propose three schemes to initialize the NN weights of the shortcut connection layer based on the physical characteristics of AC-PF equations. Specifically, two model-based methods require the knowledge of system topology and line parameters, while the purely data-driven method can work without power grid parameters. Numerical tests on five benchmark systems show that our proposed approaches achieve higher accuracy in estimating voltage phasors than existing methods. In addition, three meticulously designed initialization schemes help the NN training process converge faster, which is appealing under limited training time.Comment: Probabilistic power flow, data-driven, residual learning, neural network, physics-guided initializatio

Digging Deeper into Egocentric Gaze Prediction

This paper digs deeper into factors that influence egocentric gaze. Instead of training deep models for this purpose in a blind manner, we propose to inspect factors that contribute to gaze guidance during daily tasks. Bottom-up saliency and optical flow are assessed versus strong spatial prior baselines. Task-specific cues such as vanishing point, manipulation point, and hand regions are analyzed as representatives of top-down information. We also look into the contribution of these factors by investigating a simple recurrent neural model for ego-centric gaze prediction. First, deep features are extracted for all input video frames. Then, a gated recurrent unit is employed to integrate information over time and to predict the next fixation. We also propose an integrated model that combines the recurrent model with several top-down and bottom-up cues. Extensive experiments over multiple datasets reveal that (1) spatial biases are strong in egocentric videos, (2) bottom-up saliency models perform poorly in predicting gaze and underperform spatial biases, (3) deep features perform better compared to traditional features, (4) as opposed to hand regions, the manipulation point is a strong influential cue for gaze prediction, (5) combining the proposed recurrent model with bottom-up cues, vanishing points and, in particular, manipulation point results in the best gaze prediction accuracy over egocentric videos, (6) the knowledge transfer works best for cases where the tasks or sequences are similar, and (7) task and activity recognition can benefit from gaze prediction. Our findings suggest that (1) there should be more emphasis on hand-object interaction and (2) the egocentric vision community should consider larger datasets including diverse stimuli and more subjects.Comment: presented at WACV 201

Exact Topology and Parameter Estimation in Distribution Grids with Minimal Observability

Limited presence of nodal and line meters in distribution grids hinders their optimal operation and participation in real-time markets. In particular lack of real-time information on the grid topology and infrequently calibrated line parameters (impedances) adversely affect the accuracy of any operational power flow control. This paper suggests a novel algorithm for learning the topology of distribution grid and estimating impedances of the operational lines with minimal observational requirements - it provably reconstructs topology and impedances using voltage and injection measured only at the terminal (end-user) nodes of the distribution grid. All other (intermediate) nodes in the network may be unobserved/hidden. Furthermore no additional input (e.g., number of grid nodes, historical information on injections at hidden nodes) is needed for the learning to succeed. Performance of the algorithm is illustrated in numerical experiments on the IEEE and custom power distribution models

Space Shuttle propulsion parameter estimation using optimal estimation techniques

The fifth monthly progress report includes corrections and additions to the previously submitted reports. The addition of the SRB propellant thickness as a state variable is included with the associated partial derivatives. During this reporting period, preliminary results of the estimation program checkout was presented to NASA technical personnel