Xinbo Geng

Xinbo Geng

Workday Trading Analyst
Weekend Researcher
electricity/market/optimization
reading, thinking and writing

About Me

  • A passionate researcher with interests in decision making under uncertainties (robust/stochastic/chance-constrained optimization), machine learning/data science/statistical learning.
  • An analyst/engineer/programmer with specialized expertise in power markets and power system operations.

News

  • [Apr.2021] I’ve made the hard decision to leave academia. Max Weber gave a speech titled Science as a Vocation in 1922, many paragraphs are still enlightening 100 years later.
  • [Jan.2021] PSERC Report LaTeX Template available on Github.
  • [Jan.2021] New manuscript Deferrable Load Scheduling under Demand Charge: A Block Model-Predictive Control Approach. The proposed B-MPC approach breaks the demand charge (happening at the end of control horizon) into a sequence of stage-costs. Comprehensive numerical results show that BMPC outperforms many benchmark methods (nominal MPC, economic MPC, online algorithms such as earliest deadline first, and least-laxity-first later-deadline) in various settings.
  • [Nov.2020] New manuscript Probabilistic Hosting Capacity Analysis via Bayesian Optimization. Probabilistic hosting capacity evaluation problem is non-convex and computational expensive to check the feasibility of candidate solutions. We propose a framework using Bayesian Optimization to find the global optimal solutions.
  • [Oct.2020] Updated manuscript Computing Essential Sets for Convex and Non-convex Scenario Problems: Theory and Application. We solve chance-constrained convex/non-convex problems using the scenario approach, and obtain probabilistic guarantees on the feasibility of optimal solutions. Main results are illustrated using Chance-constrained Security-constrained Unit Commitment (SCUC).
  • [Aug.2020] Giving a short tutorial on using TAMU High Performance Research Computing (HPRC) clusters, details here, at the How to be “cloud-ready” for conducting power/energy research virtual workshop.
  • [May.2020] blog post with datasets for demand-related studies (EV, NILM, DR, etc)
  • [Jan.2020] Officially started my postdoc, holding a joint position at Cornell University and Texas A&M University.
  • [Dec.2019] Road trip to National Parks in Texas and New Mexico.
  • [Dec.2019] Attended my PhD graduation ceremony at College Station, TX. Now officially Dr. Geng!
  • [Dec.2019] Left University of Wisconsin, Madison. These three months were fruitful and cheering!
  • [Nov.2019] Giving a talk at the power hour of University of Wisconsin, Madison.
  • [Nov.2019] New manuscript: A General Scenario Theory For Security-Constrained Unit Commitment With Probabilistic Guarantees.
  • [Oct.2019] Dissertation was submitted and approved by Texas A&M.
  • [Sep.2019] Became a visiting student at University of Wisconsin, Madison.
  • [Sep.2019] Successfully defended my dissertation titled “Power System Operations with Probabilistic Guarantees”.
  • [Jun.2019] New manuscript “Chance-constrained Unit Commitment via the Scenario Approach” is accepted by the 51st North American Power Symposium (NAPS), an extended version is available on arXiv.
  • [May.2019] Paper titled “Data-driven Decision Making in Power Systems with Probabilistic Guarantees: Theory and Applications of Chance-constrained Optimization” was accepted by Annual Reviews in Control.
  • [Feb.2019] Version 0.1 of the Matlab Toolbox ConvertChanceConstraint(ccc) for Chance-constrained Optimization is open-source on Github.
  • [Jan.2019] Journal Paper “Data-driven Decision Making in Power Systems with Probabilistic Guarantees: Theory and Applications of Chance-constrained Optimization” was submitted to Annual Reviews in Control. We provide a comprehensive literature review of methods to solve chance-constrained optimization (CCO) and applications of CCO in power system decision making.
  • [Jan.2019] Won the ISSIP-IBM-CBA Student Paper Award at the Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS-52).
  • [Jan.2019] Presenting our paper “Robust Three-phase Balancing of Distribution Loads” accepted by HICSS-52 at the Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS-52), Maui, HI.
  • [Dec.2018] Awarded the Graduate Teaching Fellowship (the Dwight Look College of Engineering), ~10 out of the College of Engineering.
  • [Sep.2018] Visiting MIT LIDS/IDSS in Fall 2018.
  • [Aug.2018] Attending the IEEE Power and Energy Society General Meeting (PESGM), Portland, OR.
  • [July.2018] Passed the PhD Prelimary Exam, one step closer to graduation!
  • [Apr.2018] Giving a talk on chance-constrained programs at Simons Institute, part of the Real-time Decision Making seminar series.
  • [Jan.2018] Visiting Simons Institute, UC Berkeley in Spring 2018.

Recent Publications

  • Journal Paper “Data-driven Decision Making in Power Systems with Probabilistic Guarantees: Theory and Applications of Chance-constrained Optimization” submitted to Annual Reviews in Control.
  • Conference Paper “Robust Three-phase Balancing of Distribution Loads” accepted by HICSS-52!
  • Conference Paper “Chance-constrained Optimal Reactive Power Dispatch” accepted by PESGM2018!