ECE Seminar: Leo Y. Jiang "Unlocking Grid Flexibility for High-Penetration Solar Integration."

Content

Abstract:
Avangrid pioneered the deployment of Flex IX technology in North America through two pilot sites in upstate New York,operated over a four-year period. The demonstrations increased solar hosting capacity from 2.6 MW to 15 MW while avoiding approximately $3 million in grid reinforcement costs. However, operational experience also revealed challenges,including solar curtailment caused by grid asset loading constraints during normal operation and additional generation restrictions during communication outages. As utilities across the United States explore broader adoption of flexible interconnection, reducing unnecessary curtailment while maintaining distribution system reliability has become
increasingly important for improving project economics and accelerating solar deployment.
This seminar will share lessons learned from Avangrid’s Flex IX pilot demonstrations and present advanced technologies to improve system performance, including dynamic asset rating and enhanced fail-safe control strategies to reduce solar curtailment during both normal operation and communication outages. Beyond flexible interconnection, the seminar will explore emerging technical challenges associated with integrating inverter-based DERs into weak distribution networks,highlighting the need for advanced stability risk assessment and coordinated smart inverter control. These developments illustrate how greater flexibility in grid assets and inverter-based resources can help support a more reliable and cost-effective clean energy transition.
Bio:
Dr. Leo Y. Jiang is an Associate Professor and Director of the Center for Electric Power System Research at Clarkson University. Before joining Clarkson in 2020, he was a Power System Engineer at GE Global Research in Niskayuna, New York, from 2016 to 2020, where he received the GE Dushman Technology Excellence Award for his contributions to advancing GE technologies and products.
At Clarkson, Dr. Jiang has established extensive collaborations with industry partners, including NYISO, Avangrid, NYPA,and GE, focusing on power system planning, distributed energy resource integration, and grid modernization to support a reliable, efficient, and resilient transition to clean energy. In 2024, he received the NSF CAREER Award for his research on managing renewable energy uncertainties in power system operations and planning.
Since May 2024, Dr. Jiang has also served as a part-time Principal Consulting Engineer at Avangrid, contributing to distribution system planning, DER interconnection, planning criteria development, and data-driven investment prioritization for grid modernization. In 2025, he joined the Energy Systems Integration Group (ESIG) as an Engineering Fellow,
leading initiatives in DER integration and distribution system modernization.