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Smart Grid Systems (SGS)
This zipped file contains the course materials for ECE6327 Smart Grid Systems offered at the University of Houston (UH) in 2026 Spring; some modifications were made to improve the material quality before making it publicly available.
This repo is the second public release of our course materials, following our first release in May 2022. Major changes were made this year, which are summarized below.
Course Description:
This course provides a comprehensive introduction to smart grid systems covering analysis and operation of the traditional power grid, the new challenges, and the emerging technologies that make the “dumb grid” become smart. This course is focused on the grid system rather than individual device; and this course is focused on the electrical system rather than the communication system. The emphasis is on smart grid analysis, operation, and management, control architecture, and software systems.
Course Scope and Specific Topics:
- Lectures 1 - 2: Course Introduction and Overview
- Lectures 3 - 4: AC & DC Power Flow, Sensitivity Factor PTDF
- Lectures 5 - 6: DCOPF & SCUC
- Lectures 7 - 8: State Estimation, FDI Cyber-Attack
- Lectures 9 - 10: Demand Side Management, Demand Response
- Lecture 11: Data Center Grid Interconnection
- Lectures 12 - 14: Renewable Energy: overview, wind, solar, biomass, hydro, and geothermal
- Lectures 15 - 16: Renewable Energy Grid Integration
- Lecture 17: Offshore Power
- Lectures 18 - 19: Flexible Transmission: network topology control, FACTS, bus splitting, and DLR
- Lectures 20 - 21: Energy Storage, Battery Degradation, and Electric Vehicle
- Lectures 22 - 23: DER, Microgrid, Energy Management and Sizing, and Power-Hydrogen
- Lecture 24: Advanced Metering Infrastructure & Home Energy Management
- Lecture 25: ERCOT Grid Crisis 2021, Wholesale Power Energy Market, and LMP
Data Center Lecture recording:
The class recording for the data center lecture (11) is available on YouTube:
Shared Contents:
- Folder “__Lectures” contains all lecture source PowerPoint slides and converted PDF copies.
- Folder “_Examples_Codes\AMPL_Codes” contains about 40 AMPL programs, including simple tutorial-level examples and codes for DCOPF, SCUC, DSM, SUC, transmission switching, FACTS, energy storage, and microgrid energy management and sizing examples that are used for this class. AMPL tutorial is also provided.
- Folder “_Examples_Codes\Python_Codes” contains about 40 Python/Pyomo programs, including simple tutorial-level examples and codes for DCOPF, SCUC, DSM, SUC, transmission switching, FACTS, energy storage, and microgrid energy management and sizing examples that are used for this class.
- Folder “Discussion_Assignment” contains 1 discussion assignment (both word and PDF files).
- Folder “HW” contains 6 homework assignments (both word and PDF files).
- Folder “Project” contains the project assignment (both word and PDF files; and data/codes).
- Syllabus is also provided as a reference.
Assignment Solutions, Tests/Exams and their solutions are not included here. If you are an instructor and plan to use these materials, I would be happy to provide such for-instructor-only materials; please feel free to send me an email with your institutional email account. My contact information is listed below.
Software Requirements:
This course uses Matlab and AMPL (other similar alternative tools may work as well).
Changes in the 2026S Release:
Compared to the 2022S release, I corrected typos, modified some HW problems, and re-designed the class project milestones and requirements, etc.
To reduce the overlap between this Smart Grid class and traditional power system operations class, I replaced 3 “old” lectures with “new” lectures. Currently, we have 5 “old” lectures (3-7) that cover fundamentals on power system analysis and operations, which I believe are necessary to keep to make this course independent without requiring pre-requisite. In this way, students without much power system background can still take this class and succeed, although such students may commit relatively more time than students with a strong background in power systems.
To cover the latest industry focuses, a full lecture on data center was created this year in 2026. Offshore power has expanded from a few slides to a full lecture. Grid integration of renewable energy has expanded from 1 lecture to 2 lectures.
Many facts/numbers were outdated due to the extremely-fast grid evolution in recent 5 years. Those facts/numbers are now updated.
- For instance, when this course was initially developed in 2018, the U.S. had less than 1 GW of utility-scale battery storage; however, by the end of 2025, U.S. utility-scale battery storage had reached about 41 GW. As of May 2026, ERCOT in Texas alone has about 19 GW.
For in-class lecture examples, we now also provide Python/Pyomo source codes, in addition to the AMPL codes that were originally provided in 2022S version. Special thanks to my PhD student Haoxiang Wan for translating the AMPL programs into Python programs.
Suggested Text:
Although the following book is suggested, it is not required and there is no required book for this class. Suggested book: Power Generation, Operation, and Control, 3rd edition, by Allen J. Wood, Bruce F. Wollenberg, and Gerald B. Sheblé. The UH library offers an online version - electronic copy - of this book.
Note that some of the lecture slides, mainly lectures 3-7, overlap with my other class ECE6379.
Contact:
Dr. Xingpeng Li
University of Houston
Email: xli83@central.uh.edu
Website: https://rpglab.github.io/
Acknowledgment:
A number of slides in the attached lectures were adapted from the paper presentations, oral exam presentations, internal group meeting presentations, both published and unpublished work of my PhD students, including Arun Venkatesh Ramesh, Mingjian Tuo, Cunzhi Zhao, Jin Lu, Thuan Pham, Jesus Silva-Rodriguez, Rida Fatima, Ann Mary Toms, Qiushi Wang, Hassan Zahid Butt, Fan Jiang, Linhan Fang, and Haoxiang Wan.
Figshare:
This folder was initially uploaded on Figshare. The link is as follows: https://figshare.com/articles/online_resource/ECE6327_SmartGrid/19761268
Citation:
License:
This work is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC BY 4.0) license.
Disclaimer:
The author doesn’t make any warranty for the accuracy, completeness, or usefulness of any information disclosed and the author assumes no liability or responsibility for any errors or omissions for the information (data/code/results etc) disclosed.