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Dr. Ali Abur gave a talk at the University of Napoli in Naples, Italy on Feb. 13, 2015. His presentation was titled "Fault DetectionUsing Sparse Estimation Based on PMU Measurements."

Abstract: This talk covers fault location in power grids where synchronized voltage measurements are sparsely available at a limited number of buses. It will be shown that the fault location problem can be formulated as a sparse regression problem and then solved using the least absolute selection and shrinkage operator (lasso) algorithm. Relationship between the equivalent current injections at faulted branch terminals and the distance to the fault point along the branch yields a fast and efficient way to locate faults. The enabling technology for this application is the phasor measurement unit which can provide voltage and current phasor measurements at sampling rates of 30 times a second. The talk reviews the main features of these devices and then describes the problem, which can be formulated in such a way to be solved using phasor measurements and sparse estimation methods.Ali-Abur-NEU.png

Bio: Dr. Ali Abur obtained his B.S. degree from Orta Do?u Teknik Üniversitesi, Ankara, Turkey in 1979 and his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from The Ohio State University in 1981 and 1985, respectively. He was a faculty member at Texas A&M University until November 2005 when he joined the faculty of Northeastern University and served as Chair of the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department until 2013. He is currently a Professor in the same department with research and educational activities mainly in the area of power systems. He is an IEEE PES Distinguished Lecturer and a Fellow of the IEEE for his work on power system state estimation. He co-authored a book and is widely published in IEEE journals and conferences. He was on the Editorial Board of IEEE Transactions on Power Systems and Power Engineering Letters during 1999-2011.