SE Seminar Series: Damola Ajeyemi

Speaker: Damola AjeyemiTitle: Dynamic Control Barrier Function Filters for Frequency Containment in Grid-Following Inverters Abstract: Modern power grids are undergoing a major transition driven by the growing share of inverter-based renewable generation and the rapid growth of AI data-center loads. The changing generation mix is reducing synchronous inertia, making it more difficult to keep frequency within operating limits following generation–demand imbalances. This talk presents the design of safety filters for grid-following (GFL) inverters in power transmission systems to constrain frequency nadirs and zeniths during disturbances. Using a reduced electromechanical model and control barrier functions (CBFs), we develop an ideal filter through a convex quadratic program (QP). The ideal QP filter renders the set of admissible frequencies forward invariant, however, its direct implementation is impractical, as it requires centralized implementation and model-based computation. We then use a dual proximal formulation and a two-time-scale implementation to obtain dynamic scalar filters that use only local frequency and rate-of-change-of-frequency estimates. We derive explicit bounds on the distance between state trajectories under the local dynamic and ideal static CBF filters. The bounds quantify the effects of the filter bandwidth, initialization, load variation, and frequency estimation errors, and provide estimates of possible frequency-limit violations. High-fidelity electromagnetic-transient (EMT) simulations on the New England IEEE 39-bus system demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach in containing transient frequency excursions. Bio: Damola Ajeyemi is a Ph.D. candidate in Systems Engineering at Boston University, working with Prof. Emiliano Dall’Anese. His research lies at the intersection of control, learning, and optimization for cyber-physical systems, particularly modern power grids. His work focuses on understanding and improving the stability, safety, and performance of large-scale power systems with increasing penetration of converter-interfaced generation (CIG) through high-fidelity modeling and control designs.