Omid Ardakanian

Short Biography

I am a research associate in the Information Systems and Science for Energy (ISS4E) research group, University of Waterloo. I am currently working on home energy data analysis, storage sizing, and smart grid communications under supervision of Prof. Keshav. I have a Masters in Computer Science from University of Waterloo and a B.Sc. in Computer Engineering from Sharif University of Technology. My general research interests include:

Smart Grid
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Performance Analysis of Communication Networks
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Machine Learning

Research

I am working on applying data mining methods to uncover hidden patterns in energy consumption data gathered by noisy sensors deployed in homes and power transmission and distribution systems. My research also extends to the design of home automation and actuation systems that enable homeowners to interact with their appliances in order to respond to grid congestion signals.

I have also worked on applying telecommunication and networking concepts to the electrical grid to size transformers and storage systems as we size links and buffers in computer networks. My Master's thesis was about sizing storage in the electrical grid. We proved that the buffer overflow probability in a finite queuing system is equivalent to the storage underflow probability in the electrical grid.

Tail probability approximation of buffer content of a single server with a finite queue has been studied in the past. More specifically, large deviations theory has been used to derive approximations for cell blocking probability in ATM networks. Therefore, using the analogy between a queuing system and the electrical grid, we can derive similar approximations for the storage underflow probability. This enables us to develop a sizing guideline for stores and transformers in the electrical grid (+).

To see the complete list of my projects visit the Projects page.

Research Philosophy

Climate change and global warming have been amongst major concerns of human beings since the last decades of the 20th century. Recently a lot of effort has gone into integrating renewable and green sources of energy with the grid and making the grid smarter; that is to increase energy efficiency and moderate energy consumption.

To this end, reducing and/or shifting the peak load is known to be essential to support renewable energy generation and would lead to shutting down peaking power plants that are extremely carbon-intensive. Therefore, governments along with utilities have put into effect mechanisms to reduce peak demand including time-of-use pricing, installation of load management devices, load shifting and peak eliminating technologies.

The modern grid (also known as the Smart Grid) designed for the future electricity system encompasses many of these solutions and technologies. It empowers energy consumers as well as utilities to get better control over energy consumption.

However, it seems that these are all impossible without considering the key role of Information Technology. In fact, IT has the potential to revolutionize today's grid and expedite renewable energy projects. Many scientists envision the modern grid as an internet-like energy revolution with multi-directional flow, two-way communication, distributed control and appropriate level of autonomy.

So it is worth thinking about how computer science community could contribute to building the clean energy future!

Teaching

At Waterloo

I have TAed for CS450: Computer Architecture, CS330: Management Information Systems, CS251: Computer Organization and Design, and CS115: Introduction to Computer Science. I prepared Verilog HDL tutorials when I was TAing for CS450. Slides of the first two lectures are available: Introduction, Modeling Approaches.

At Sharif

I TAed for Advanced Programming in Java.

-- Last updated on 1 June 2011