Matthias Moller

Zeynab Kaseb, Rahul Rane, Aleksandra Lekic et al.

Quantum computing has emerged as a promising computational paradigm to address unresolved challenges in the modeling and control of modern power systems. However, most existing studies focus on offline simulations, and a practical framework for validating quantum algorithms in real-time operational environments remains lacking. This study proposes a quantum hardware-in-the-loop framework that integrates a real-time digital simulator with quantum and quantum-inspired hardware to solve combinatorial power flow and optimal power flow formulations under dynamic operating conditions. The proposed framework is validated using the IEEE 9-bus test system and a modified version with integrated solar and wind farms. The results confirm successful integration and convergence within a predefined tolerance. The study also identifies key limitations and challenges, such as limited access to quantum and digital annealers and current scalability limitations, that must be considered in future developments. Nevertheless, the results highlight the potential of quantum computing to significantly enhance the modeling and control of future power systems with high penetration of renewable energy sources.

Zeynab Kaseb, Matthias Moller, Giorgio Tosti Balducci et al.

This paper explores the potential application of quantum and hybrid quantum-classical neural networks in power flow analysis. Experiments are conducted using two datasets based on 4-bus and 33-bus test systems. A systematic performance comparison is also conducted among quantum, hybrid quantum-classical, and classical neural networks. The comparison is based on (i) generalization ability, (ii) robustness, (iii) training dataset size needed, (iv) training error, and (v) training process stability. The results show that the developed hybrid quantum-classical neural network outperforms both quantum and classical neural networks, and hence can improve deep learning-based power flow analysis in the noisy-intermediate-scale quantum (NISQ) and fault-tolerant quantum (FTQ) era.

Zeynab Kaseb, Matthias Moller, Peter Palensky et al.

The increasing scale and nonlinearity of modern energy and power system problems pose significant challenges to classical numerical solvers. In parallel, advances in quantum and quantum-inspired hardware are expected to improve scalability and offer performance advantages for large-scale optimization problems. Therefore, we propose a novel combinatorial optimization framework that reformulates continuous energy and power system problems into a format executable on quantum/digital annealers. The proposed framework accommodates both real and complex numbers and can represent both linear and nonlinear equations. As a proof of concept, we demonstrate its use in three applications: (i) 2D steady conductive heat transfer for a plate with constant temperature at each edge, where coefficient and boundary condition matrices are developed to solve linear system of equations, (ii) power system parameter identification, where the admittance matrix is estimated given voltage and current measurements, and (iii) power flow analysis, which solves the governing equations for active and reactive power balance. As a proof of concept, the applications are run on small test cases. The results show that the framework effectively and efficiently addresses the three applications and therefore suggest its potential to solve a wide range of energy and power system problems.

Zeynab Kaseb, Matthias Moller, Lindsay Spoor et al.

The Newton-Raphson (NR) method is widely used for solving power flow (PF) equations due to its quadratic convergence. However, its performance deteriorates under poor initialization or extreme operating scenarios, e.g., high levels of renewable energy penetration. Traditional NR initialization strategies often fail to address these challenges, resulting in slow convergence or even divergence. We propose the use of reinforcement learning (RL) to optimize the initialization of NR, and introduce a novel quantum-enhanced RL environment update mechanism to mitigate the significant computational cost of evaluating power system states over a combinatorially large action space at each RL timestep by formulating the voltage adjustment task as a quadratic unconstrained binary optimization problem. Specifically, quantum/digital annealers are integrated into the RL environment update to evaluate state transitions using a problem Hamiltonian designed for PF. Results demonstrate significant improvements in convergence speed, a reduction in NR iteration counts, and enhanced robustness under different operating conditions.