RIO 2025 Workshop

Advanced Control Strategies for Power Systems in Transition

Full Day Workshop

Location: Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Date: Tuesday December 9, 2025

Thanks to the generous support of ONS, the Brazilian grid operator, we organized a workshop on December 9 at their Rio de Janeiro location.

Find here the workshop presentations

Context

Large-scale power systems are undergoing radical change. The transition to a low-carbon or even zerocarbon economy is driving electricity generation from non-carbon sources and increasing electrification in energy-intensive sectors. This shift raises critical questions about the integration of renewable energy into the grid, which power system stakeholders must address.
As complexity grows, ensuring reliable operation becomes more challenging. Modern power systems, now intricate cyber-physical networks, require advanced engineering solutions. Renewable energy sources—primarily solar and wind—are inherently variable and rely on stochastic primary power flows.
They typically connect to the AC grid via power electronic converters at various power and voltage levels, introducing highly controllable elements capable of rapid response.
To manage this complexity, automatic control is essential, leveraging feedback strategies to mitigate disturbances and enhance performance while avoiding costly, over-sized infrastructure. However, as more active devices emerge at the system’s edge, centralized control becomes impractical and fragile.
In this context, distributed control is a necessity. A structured approach based on hierarchical control and protection strategies is required to ensure stability and efficiency in large power systems undergoing transition, based on separation of time scales in system dynamics.

The recent large-scale blackout in the Iberian Peninsula serves as a reminder of the crucial role that automatic controls play in maintaining the proper operation of large power systems, REE’s report: Blackout in the Spanish Peninsular Electrical System the 28th of April 2025. June 2025.

Workshop Objectives

The goal of the workshop is to bring together controls and power systems researchers, who propose new control strategies for this modern power system, addressing some open issues: design of distributed controls, possibly based on adaptive (data-driven) control approaches, going beyond system balancing and frequency control issues, but proposing solutions for congestion and voltage/reactive power management.

Power systems are critical infrastructure, provable guarantees are mandatory. In fact, this workshop aligns well with IEEE CSS’s recent publication: “ Control for Societal-scale Challenges: Road Map 2030” as reliable and resilient power systems depend critically on advances in control theory and its applications to achieve desired climate mitigation and renewable energy targets.

Organizers:

Speakers:

Workshop Program

Short bios of the speakers:

• Mads Almassalkhi:
  • L. Richard Fisher Associate Professor at the University of Vermont. His research focuses on engineering flexibility for power/energy systems to optimize energy resilience.
    He serves as founding Director for UVM’s newest center on energy and autonomy, CREATE and is Associate Editor at IEEE Transactions on Power Systems and Chair of the IEEE CSS Technical Committee on Energy Systems (TC-ES). He has been recognized with an NSF CAREER award.in 2021 and as the Otto Mønsted Visiting Professor at DTU in 2022. He also holds a joint appointment at PNNL as Chief Scientist. Previously, he was co-founder of Packetized Energy, a clean-tech startup acquired by EnergyHub. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Michigan in 2013.
• Patrick Panciatici:
  • Former Senior Scientific Advisor at RTE (French Transmission System Operator). He joined EDF R&D in 1985 and then RTE in 2003 when he participated in the creation of an internal R&D department at RTE. He has 40 years of experience in power systems: modeling, simulation, control and optimization. He interacts with a large network of international experts and academic teams worldwide on these topics. He is a member of CIGRE and a Fellow of IEEE. He has been the RTE representative in two US initiatives: PSERC and Bits&Watts.
    He is currently: Member of the Advisory Board of the NSF AI Research Institute for Advances in Optimization (AI4OPT), Scientific Collaborator of the University of Li`ege (Belgium), Co-PI of the ANITI Industrial Chair ”POPML4PS: Combining Polynomial Optimization and Machine Learning : Application to Power System Decision Support Tools” (Toulouse), Associate Researcher at the Laboratory of Signals and Systems, a French laboratory jointly run by the CNRS, CentraleSupélec and the University of Paris-Saclay.
• Nelson Martins:
  • Dr. Nelson Martins participates in the IEEE-PES Power System Dynamic Performance Committee and CIGRE Study Committee C2. He is vice-president (2023-2026) of the Brazilian National Academy of Engineering and its Energy Committee Chair. His research interests and publications have embraced small-signal stability, controller design, power plant tests, power flow controls, FACTS & HVDC controls, power system harmonics, blackouts and system restoration dynamics, modal analysis, large-scale eigenvalue methods, and model reduction. His citation h-index is 27 (Web of Science) and 43 (Google Scholar). He was elected a member of the US National Academy of Engineering (NAE, 2015) and the Brazilian National Academy of Engineering (ANE, 2015).
    He received the 2015 IEEE PES Prabha S. Kundur Power System Dynamics and Control Award.
    He worked in CEPEL, the Brazilian Electrical Energy Center, for 41 years, where he idealized and initially developed its small-signal stability software, which is used by the Brazilian G&Tutilities and the Brazilian Interconnected Power System Operator. He is an Honorary Member of CIGRE-Brasil and an IEEE Life Fellow.
• Alexandre Zucarato
  • Dr. Alexandre N. Zucarato became the head of the Planning Directorate at the National Electric System Operator (ONS) on May 2020, and was reappointed for a new term on May 2024. He holds a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from the Federal University of Santa Catarina (UFSC) and has 24 years of experience in the Brazilian electric sector.
    Zucarato spent ten years at Engie Brasil Energia, where he served as the Strategy and Innovation Manager, a consultant for new business development, and an analyst for regulatory affairs and market intelligence. He also worked for four years at the Electric Energy Trading Chamber (CCEE) as the Energy Pricing Manager and later as the Market Intelligence Manager. Prior to that, he was a researcher for six years at the Electric Power Systems Planning Laboratory (LabPLan/UFSC).
    For the past five years, Zucarato has led the Planning Directorate of the ONS, which is responsible for all planning activities and electroenergetic studies. These responsibilities include studies on the expansion and reinforcement of the transmission network, as well as medium- and long-term electroenergetic planning, engineering studies, and forecasts.
• Johanna Mathieu :
  • Johanna Mathieu is an associate professor of electrical engineering and computer science at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Her research focuses on ways to reduce the environmental impact, cost, and inefficiency of electric power systems via new operational and control strategies.
    She is particularly interested in developing new methods to actively engage distributed energy resources such as energy storage, flexible electric loads, and renewables in power system operation.
    She also uses engineering methods to inform energy policy. Professor Mathieu has PhD and degrees from the University of California, Berkeley and a bachelor’s degree from MIT. She was a postdoctoral researcher at ETH Zurich, Switzerland. She currently serves as director for the UM Institute for Energy Solutions and past chair of the IEEE PES Technical Committee on Smart Buildings, Loads, and Customer Systems. She has received an NSF CAREER Award, R&D100 Award, IEEE PES Wanda Reder Pioneer in Power Award, DOE C3E Fundamental & Applied Research Award, and Ernest and Bettine Kuh Distinguished Faculty Award.
• Sorin Olaru :
  • Sorin Olaru is habilitated Professor of Control Engineering at CentraleSupélec, within the University Paris-Saclay and is currently leading the RTE Chair on “The Digital Transformation of Electricity Networks”. His research interests encompass the optimization-based control design, set-theoretic characterization of constrained dynamical systems and the resilience of networked control systems. He was the chair of the IFACWorkshop on Control Applications of Optimization held jointly with the International Conference on Discrete Equations and Applications in 2022 and the general chair of the Power Systems Computation Conference held in 2024 in Paris-Saclay.
• Saverio Bolognani:
  • Saverio Bolognani received the Ph.D. degree in Information Engineering from the University of Padova, Italy, in 2011. In 2006-2007, he was a visiting graduate student at the University of California at San Diego. In 2013-2014, he was a Postdoctoral Associate at the Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge (MA). He is currently a Senior Scientist and a PI at the Automatic Control Laboratory at ETH Zurich. His research interests include networked control of power systems, cyber-physical systems, the intersection of nonlinear optimization with feedback control design, multi-agent systems, and game theory. His work on real-time optimization of power systems has been awarded with the Basil Papadias Student Paper Award at IEEE Powertech (as supervisor), the ETH Medal and the SGA Förderpreis Award (as supervisor), and the Watt d’Or Award in 2024.
• Glauco N. Taranto :
  • Glauco N. Taranto received the B.Sc. degree in 1988 from the State University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, the M.Sc. degree in 1991 from the Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and the Ph.D. degree in 1994 from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY, USA, all in Electrical Engineering (EE). In 2006, he was on sabbatical leave as a Visiting Fellow at CESI, Milan, Italy. Since 1995, he has been with the EE Department of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro / COPPE, Brazil, where he is currently a Professor, and head of the Power Systems Group and Laboratory. He is the vice-chair of the IEEE PES Power System Dynamic Performance Committee, and member of the Administrative Committee of CIGRÉ-Brasil. He was president of the IEEE Rio de Janeiro Section in 2008-2009.
  • His research interests include power system dynamics, protections and controls, robust control design, distributed energy resources and hybrid AC/DC networks.
• Ioannis Lestas :
  • Ioannis Lestas is a Professor of Control Engineering at the Department of Engineering, University of Cambridge. He received the B.A. (Starred First) and M.Eng. (Distinction) degrees in Electrical Engineering and Information Sciences and the Ph.D. in control engineering from the University of Cambridge (Trinity College). His doctoral work was performed as a Gates Scholar.
    He has been a Junior Research Fellow of Clare College, University of Cambridge and he was awarded a five year Royal Academy of Engineering research fellowship. He is also the recipient of a five year ERC starting grant, and an ERC proof of concept grant. He is currently serving as Associate Editor for the IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control, the IEEE Transactions on Smart Grid, and as a senior Editor for the IEEE Transactions on Control of Network Systems.
    His research interests include analysis and control of large-scale networks with applications in power systems and smart grids.
• Verena Häberle :
  • Verena Häberle is a Ph.D. student with the Automatic Control Laboratory at ETH Zurich, Switzerland, working under the supervision of Professor Florian Dörfler since June 2020. She received the B.Sc. and M.Sc. degree in electrical engineering and information technology from ETH Zurich, in 2018 and 2020, respectively. In fall 2024, she has been a visiting student researcher at the California Institute of Technology supervised by Professor Steven Low. Her research focuses on dynamic ancillary services provision, dynamic virtual power plant control, and control of converter-based generation units.
• Dominic Groß :
  • Dominic Groß received the Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from the University of Kassel, Kassel, Germany, in 2014. He was a Post-Doctoral Researcher with the Automatic Control Laboratory,ETH Zürich, Zürich, Switzerland. He is currently a Dugald C. Jackson Assistant Professor with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Wisconsin- Madison, Madison, WI, USA. His research interests include distributed control and optimization of complex networked systems with applications in converter-dominated power systems and gridforming control of power electronics.
• Brian Johnson :
  • Brian Johnson is an Associate Professor in the Chandra Family Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin. He obtained his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana- Champaign, Urbana, in 2010 and 2013, respectively. Previously, he was an Assistant Professor within the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Washington in Seattle. Prior to joining the University of Washington in 2018, he was an engineer with the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. His work was recognized with a National Science Foundation CAREER Award in 2022 as well as prize paper awards from the Transactions on Energy Conversion and Transactions on Power Electronics. He is currently co-leading the multiinstitutional Universal Interoperability for Grid-Forming Inverters (UNIFI) Consortium which is funded by the U.S. Department of Energy. His research interests are in renewable energy systems, power electronics, and control systems.