John W. Simpson-Porco
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John W. Simpson-Porco, Ph.D. Associate Professor, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering Email: jwsimpson [at] ece [dot] utoronto [dot] ca |
Prospective Graduate Students and Postdoctoral Fellows: Please click here for more information.
Research Interests
Analysis and design of feedback control systems
nonlinear control
distributed control systems
optimization-based control
Control, monitoring and optimization for smart grids
bulk power systems analysis, control and optimization
ac, dc, and hybrid microgrids
active distribution systems
Recent News
March 2025: New paper on data-driven output regulation of nonlinear systems.
September 2024: J. P. Casasanta joins the group to work on nonlinear control theory.
August 2024: Ilyas Farhat defends his PhD! Congratulations Ilyas!
August 2024: New results on steady-state cascade operators in linear and nonlinear control.
January 2024: New submission on multi-area feedback-based optimization of distribution systems.
December 2023: New submission on stochastic data-driven predictive control.
Recent Papers
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| Low-Gain Integral Control IEEE TAC , 2020 (pdf), (bib) | Microgrid Stability, IEEE TPWRS, 2020 (pdf), (bib) |
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| Theory of Power Flow IEEE TCONS, 2017 (Part 1,Part 2), (bib1, bib2) | Optimal Steady-State Control, IEEE TAC, 2021 (pdf), (bib) |
Older News
September 2023: Welcome to new students Niloufar Yousefi (PhD) and Harry Zou (MASc)!
September 2023: Lectures on power system operations and control for the Dutch Institute for Systems and Control Summer School
August 2023: Etinosa Ekomwenrenren defends his PhD and begins post-doctoral fellowship at University of Laval / IREQ. Congratulations Etinosa!
March 2023: New papers on data-driven output regulation and automated analysis of primal-dual methods
October 2022: New paper on fixed-point power flow.
June 2022: I am now a Senior Member of the IEEE.
March 2022: New papers on data-driven frequency control and data-driven control of linear periodic systems.
March 2022: New paper on low-gain optimal steady-state control.
February 2022: New NecSys-submitted paper on game-theoretic feedback-based optimization.
November 2021: New paper detailing integration of our previous next-gen frequency and voltage
September 2021: Former post-doc Zhiyuan Tang starts as faculty at Sichuan University. Congratulaations Kevin!
September 2021: Enrique Espina defends his PhD, begins as Asst. Prof. at Universidad de Santiago de Chile. Congratulations Enrique!
August 2021: Our paper on diagonal stability and AGC is accepted to TCONS.
August 2021: Our paper on constrained integral control is accepted to LCSS/CDC.
October 2020: Two new submissions (TCONS, PEL) concerning automatic generation control.
August 2020: I am now a member of the IEEE PES Power System Dynamic Performance Committee.
August 2020: Our report on microgrid stability has won the IEEE PES Technical Committee Working Group Recognition Award for Outstanding Technical Report
July 2020: Joined the Systems Control Group at University of Toronto (short interview with me here).
March 2020: New paper in L-CSS on stability of distributed-averaging proportional-integral frequency control.
February 2020: New pre-print on low-gain integral control for nonlinear systems.
January 2020: I am now an Associate Editor for the IEEE Transactions on Smart Grid.
December 2019: Our report on microgrid stability has won the best task force award from the IEEE PES Power System Dynamic Performance Committee.
December 2019: Ruiqi Li joins as a PhD student, jointly supervised with S. Smith. Welcome Ruiqi!
August 2019: Ilyas Farhat joins as a PhD student. Welcome Ilyas!
July 2019: Kevin Tang joins as a post-doctoral fellow. Welcome Kevin!
March 2019: New CDC submission on robust stability of feedback optimization methods.
February 2019: New ECC tutorial paper on control of power systems.
December 2018:New TSG submission on voltage-based frequency control of microgrids.
October 2018: EPRI project Wide-Area Hierarchical Frequency and Voltage Control for Next Generation Transmission Grids begins!
October 2018: New TAC submission on the optimal steady-state control problem.
August 2018: Etinosa Ekomwenrenren joins the group as a PhD student.
May 2018: Our paper on dissipativity has been accepted as a full paper in TAC.
May 2018: Task force paper on microgrid stability definitions.
April 2018: Our paper on algebraic graph theory for circuit analysis has appeared in Proceedings of the IEEE.
March 2018: New paper on input-output performance of saddle-point algorithms.
February 2018: New paper on estimation and control in platoons.
September 2017: New paper on equilibrium-independent dissipativity theory.
September 2017: Liam Lawrence (MASc) joins the group.
New paper on power flow solvability in homogeneous distribution networks.
New paper on low-inertia stability.
Submitted a two-part paper on solvability of lossless power flow equations.
Submitted paper on Lossy DC Power Flow.
My PhD thesis won the CCDC Best Thesis Award.
September 2016: New paper on L2-gain analysis of primal-dual algorithms
September 2016: Yousef Sawires (MASc) joins the group.
July 2016: We will have three papers appear at CDC 2016 in Las Vegas, NV, USA.
July 2016: New paper on robustness of k-nearest neighbour vehicle platoons.
March 2016: Here is some press on our Nature Communications paper.
March 2016: We sent three papers to CDC.
February 2016: Our paper on voltage collapse has appeared in Nature Communications.
February 2016: We submitted a journal paper on optimal voltage control to TCONS.
November 2015: I was named CCDC Student of the Month.
March 2015: We submitted a conference paper on H2 performance of microgrid controllers to ACC 2016.
August 2015: We submitted a journal paper on distributed monitoring of static voltage instability to TSG.
July 2015: We submitted a journal paper on quadratic voltage droop control to TAC.
Older Travel
May 2023: Presentation at 9th Meeting on System and Control Theory, Waterloo, ON, Canada.
December 2022: Presentation at IEEE Conf. Decision and Control, Cancun, Mexico.
November 2022: Invited talk at workshop on polynomial optimization at CWI, Amsterdam, Netherlands.
November 2022: Invited talk at TU Delft, Delft, Netherlands.
September 2022: Invited talk at Allerton Conference, Monticello, IL, USA.
June 2020: Canadian Operations Research Conference in Toronto, ON, Canada.
February 2020: CCDC Invited Seminar, UC Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA.
February 2020: ECE Invited Seminar, UC Riverside, Riverside, CA.
November 2019: Keynote talk at Energy Open workshop at J. C. Willems Center, Groningen, Netherlands.
June 2019: Tutorial session on distributed power system control at ECC, Naples, Italy.
May 2019: Invited talk at Issac Newton Institute, Cambridge, UK.
April 2019: Invited talk at NREL's Innovative Optimization and Control Methods for Highly Distributed Autonomous Systems Workshop, Golden, CO, USA.
April 2019: Invited talk at Michigan Power and Energy Lab, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA.
March 2019: Invited talk at Conference on Information Sciences and Systems, John's Hopkins, Baltimore, MD, USA.
February 2019: Future Electric Power Systems and the Energy Transition, Champerey, Switzerland.
December 2018: IEEE Conference on Decision and Control In Miami Beach, FL, USA.
November 2018: INFORMS Annual Meeting in Phoenix, AZ, USA.
August 2018: PES General Meeting in Portland, OR, USA.
July 2018: American Control Conference in Milwaukee, WI, USA.
June 2018: Biennial Conference on Systems and Control, Toronto, ON, Canada.
March 2018: Visit to Universidad de Chile, Santiago, Chile.
April 2017: Seminar at Clarkson University in Potsdam, NY.
March 2017: Seminar at Control Strategies and Hardware Topologies for the Operation of Energy Storage System in Microgrids Workshop, Santiago, Chile.
January 2017: CCDC Seminar at UC Santa Barbara on January 20th (Slides).
January 2017: LANL Grid Science Conference in Santa Fe, NM.
December 2016: Presentations at IEEE Conference on Decision and Control In Las Vegas, NV (Slides)..
September 2016: Invited paper at Allerton in Monticello, IL.
July 2016: American Control Conference in Boston, MA (Slides)..
June 2016: Invited talk at the Workshop on Communications, Computation and Control for Resilient Smart Energy Systems in Waterloo, ON.
May 2016: 7th Biannual Meeting on System and Control Theory at Queen's University, Kingston, ON.
February 2016: Invited talk at the Centre for Power and Information, University of Toronto.
January 2016: Invited talk at ESIF Workshop on Frontiers in Distributed Optimization & Control of Sustainable Power Systems, NREL, Golden, CO, USA.
December 2015: Invited talk at Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) in Stockholm, Sweden.
November 2015: Invited talk at University of Groningen in Groningen, Netherlands.
October 2015: Three month visit to Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) Zürich, Switzerland.
May 2015: SIAM Conference on Applications of Dynamical Systems in Snowbird, UT.
January 2015: Grid Science Winter School and Conference in Santa Fe, NM.