Yuanrui Sang received the best paper award at NAPS 2017

Yuanrui Sang, PhD student in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Utah, received the best paper award at the 2017 North American Power Symposium (NAPS) in Morgantown, West Virginia.

Yuanrui won this prestigious award for her paper “The Link Between Power Flow Control Technologies: Topology Control and FACTS.” Her advisor, Dr. Mostafa Ardakani is an ECE Assistant Professor and a co-author on the paper.

NAPS highlights the work of graduate students, whose research focuses on power and energy systems. Yuanrui’s paper investigates the interdependence between two power flow control technologies: transmission switching and impedance control. She shows that independent operation of each technology can lead to inefficiencies, which can be avoided through systematic co-optimization. This issue becomes more important as the operators begin to utilize power flow control technologies more frequently. An extended version of her paper, titled “The Interdependence between Transmission Switching and Variable-Impedance Series FACTS Devices” has been recently published in IEEE Transactions on Power Systems.

This award reflects the quality of research at the University of Utah’s power program, and its recognition by the power and energy research community. Ardakani research lab is very proud of Yuanrui for receiving NAPS 2017 best paper award and wishes her a continued successful career.