Cong Feng

Cong Feng

Director's Fellow at NREL

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About Me

I am a Director’s Postdoctoral Fellow in the Sensing and Predictive Analytics Group (SePA) at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL). I earned my Ph.D. and M.S. in Mechanical Engineering from The University of Texas at Dallas (UTD) and my B.S. in Power Engineering from Wuhan University (WHU).

My research objective is to enhance the reliability, resilience, and security of power and enegy systems by promoting decision intelligence through artificial intelligence (AI) and big data. My research interests are in the areas of power systems, renewable energy, AI, and data science. I have led 1 project as a PI, 3 projects as a Co-PI (2.3 M funding in total), 4 projects as a Technical Team Leader or Task Leader with national and international collaborations. The significance of my research contributions has been demonstrated in 2 book chapters, 18 accepted journal publications (another 2 papers under review and 3 papers to be submitted), 16 top-notched conference papers, and 3 peer-reviewed technical reports, which have been cited by over 1,000 times. My research has been recognized by several awards at various levels, including 1 research award, 2 best (student) paper awards at the 2017 PES General Meeting and a Big Data Conference, and 2 fellowships. The fundamental methodologies I developed have been widely deployed in real-world systems at regional- and national-levels.

I am actively participating in synergistic activities. I am serving as editors for journals of Advances in Applied Energy, Data in Brief, and Forecasting. I am a reviewer for more than 20 journals with 200+ times, and received the Outstanding Reviewer of IEEE Transactions on Sustainable Energy for consecutive two years. I am co-organizing the “Design and Optimization of Sustainable Energy Systems Session” in the ASME International Design Engineering Technical Conferences. I am also involved in the organizing committee of the IEEE PES Grid Edge Technologies Conference & Exposition.

News

  • 12/22: Our paper has been accepted by the IEEE Electrification Magazine, titled ‘Grid Edge Visibility: Gaps and a Road Map’.
  • 10/22: I gave a talk at the 2022 INFORMS Annual Meeting, titled ‘Sky Image-informed Deep Learning for Intra-hour Solar Forecasting’.
  • 09/22: I hosted Simon Camal from MINES Paries and Valentina Vologni from Capenergies at NREL with Rui Yang.
  • 08/22: I received the prestigious Director’s Award from NREL for the exceptional contributions and leadership in multiple projects and winning proposals.
  • 08/22: I chaired a session, ‘Design and Optimization of Energy Systems’, at the ASME IDETC conference.
  • 07/22: I gave a talk at the King Abdulla City Atomic and Renewable Energy Workshop, titled ‘Machine Learning Applications in Power Systems’.
  • 07/22: We presented two papers at the 2022 Power and Energy Society General Meeting in Denver, CO.
  • 07/22: I gave a talk at the Center for Wind Energy at the University of Texas at Dallas, titled ‘Meteorology-informed Artificial Intelligence for Solar Forecasting’.
  • 06/22: I am involved in the organizing committee of the IEEE PES Grid Edge Technologies Conference and Exposition.
  • 06/22: We gave a presentation about our ‘National Intrahour Wind Power Production Database’ project at a DOE WETO Systems Integration workshop.
  • 04/22: I gave a talk at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, titled ‘Transforming Towards a Sustainable Future: Artificial Intelligence in Next Generation Energy Systems Sensing, Modeling, and Optimization’.
  • 03/22: Two papers were accepted by the 2022 IEEE PES General Meeting.
  • 02/22: I was awarded the 2021 Outstanding Reviewer of IEEE Transactions on Sustainable Energy.
  • 02/22: We received a 2-year, $1.5 M grant from the DOE Wind Energy Technologies Office. The project titled “National Intrahour Wind Power Production Database” will be led by NREL and collaborated with PNNL and UT Dallas. I will lead this project with Ryan King as Co-PIs at NREL.
  • 02/22: Our paper titled “Sizing Ramping Reserve Using Probabilistic Solar Forecasts: A Data-Driven Method” was accepted to Applied Energy.
  • 02/22: I was appointed as a Young Editorial Board Member of Advances in Applied Energy.
  • 02/22: I was selected as a Stream Task Leader of Extreme Wind Power Events in IEA Wind Task 51 (the previous Task 36).
  • 02/22: I gave a brief talk on Wind Ramp Forecating in the IEA Wind Task 51 Kick-off Meeting.
  • 02/22: Our paper titled “A Review of Behind-the-Meter Solar Forecasting” was accepted to Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews.
  • 12/21: Our paper titled “Convolutional Neural Networks for Intra-hour Solar Forecasting Based on Sky Image Sequences” was accepted to Applied Energy.
  • 10/21: We kicked off a 3-year Laboratory Directed Research & Development (LDRD) project, titled “Satellite Image Processing for Fundamental Resource Discovery based on Co-occurence Semantic Segmentation”.
  • 02/21: I was selected as the NREL Director’s Postdoctoral Fellow, a prestigious award with a $370,000 grant.
  • 02/21: I was awarded the 2022 Outstanding Reviewer of IEEE Transactions on Sustainable Energy.