Abstract: Hyperscalers are racing to train ever larger models, and the electricity needed to power them is rising just as fast. Yet new generation and transmission typically take 5–10 years to build, while data centers go up far quicker, making the grid an immediate bottleneck. How can we unlock gigawatts of grid capacity now, or at least much sooner than current timelines?

I’ll survey two lines of work from my group. The first is on accelerating large load interconnection via flexible connection programs that explicitly use load flexibility to advance energization. I’ll discuss why such programs can unlock substantial grid hosting capacity while requiring only infrequent load interventions (e.g., ~1% annual curtailment), and how utilities can trade off added capacity against quality of service. The second is on modeling and leveraging the couplings between the grid and flexible load systems, particularly data centers and electric vehicles (EVs). We will demonstrate how such couplings, when not properly accounted for, may lead to unintended consequences in capacity expansion processes, and how one flexible load system (e.g., electrified transportation) can facilitate the integration of another (e.g., data centers).  Together, these tools and insights point to practical pathways for mobilizing near-term capacity while informing longer-horizon planning, market design, and policy.

Bio: Junjie Qin is an Assistant Professor in the Elmore Family School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Purdue University. Before joining Purdue, he was a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California, Berkeley. He obtained a Ph.D. degree in Computational and Mathematical Engineering from Stanford University, where he also received an M.S. degree in Civil and Environmental Engineering and an M.S. degree in Statistics. He received his undergraduate degrees from Tsinghua University, Beijing, China. He received the NSF CAREER Award in 2023, IEEE CSS Energy Systems TC Outstanding Student Paper Award (as the advisor) in 2023, Google Research Scholar Award in 2022, the 2020 O. Hugo Schuck Best Paper Award by the American Automatic Control Council, the Best Student Paper Award at the 23rd IEEE International Conference on Intelligent Transportation Systems, the Best Student Paper Finalist at the 55th IEEE Conference on Decision and Control, and the Satre Family Fellowship on Energy and Sustainability.

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