Engineers in academia or in industry with an interest in power grid modernization can learn the latest about sensor technologies and innovative use cases of various sensor data in a new book. 

Smart Grid Sensors: Principles and Applications (Cambridge University Press), published in April 2022 by professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering Hamed Mohsenian-Rad, covers smart grid sensors, a component of electrical power grids that use real-time monitoring to lower costs, save energy, integrate renewable energy resources, and improve reliability, security and resiliency. The book’s contents enhance knowledge in the area of Energy, Environment and Sustainability, one of 12 key research themes at the Marlan and Rosemary Bourns College of Engineering. 

Currently, there is a lot of international interest in modernizing the electric power infrastructure, including the Biden administration’s “Building a Better Grid” initiative to catalyze the nationwide development of new and upgraded high-capacity electric transmission lines.

A big part of this is understanding how to obtain and analyze a wide range and a large volume of data from traditional and state-of-the-art smart grid sensors, the crux of Mohsenian-Rad’s book. This includes the analysis of abnormalities and incipient failures, i.e., problems that are in their early stages but can lead to potential catastrophic failures in the future. 

The book addresses data-driven and intelligent methods for using sensor measurements and topics such as smart meters, synchronized phasor measurements, synchronized waveform measurements, situational awareness, probing and working with off-domain measurements.

Ultimately, Mohsenian-Rad says, the book is a gateway to understanding the broader subject of smart grid development and the field of big data in power systems.  

The book provides examples, exercise questions, and sample data sets, with emphasis on real-world smart grid problems and engineering scenarios, as well as step-by-step explanations for data-driven and mathematical methods used to employ measurements from various sensor technologies in important applications. Many of the examples in this book are inspired by the author’s research activities, and several terabytes of sensor measurements that he has been working on over the past decade.

The online version of the book is publicly available to UC Riverside faculty and students here. Others can access the book at Cambridge University Press here.

Mohsenian-Rad is Bourns Family Faculty Fellow, associate director of the Winston Chung Global Energy Center and director of the Smart Grid Research Lab. In 2020, he was named as Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), an honor that is conferred by the IEEE Board of Directors upon a person with an extraordinary record of accomplishments. Mohsenian-Rad has received several awards in research and teaching, including the CAREER Award from the National Science Foundation (NSF), the Distinguished Teaching Award from the Marlan and Rosemary Bourns College of Engineering, and Best Paper Awards from multiple IEEE conferences.