Dr. Raheel Zafar is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering at LUMS. He received his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering with a specialization in Power Systems in 2019 from the University of New South Wales (UNSW), Sydney, Australia. He obtained his B.Sc. (2009) and M.Sc. (2011) degrees in Electrical Engineering from the University of Engineering and Technology (UET), Lahore. He has worked as a Lecturer at UET Lahore for one and a half years. He has also served as an Assistant Professor at GIK Institute. He has worked at NESCOM and NTDC for four years.
His research focuses mainly on the technical challenges involved in the integration of renewable energy sources into distribution grids. He has developed a multi-timescale volt/VAR optimization framework to coordinate slow-acting traditional control equipment with fast-acting smart inverters. He has considered battery energy storage system to effectively integrate renewable energy sources in power grids under forecasting uncertainties. He has developed convex relaxation models to achieve the global optima of several concrete research problems. His research has resulted in several publications in reputable journals and conferences including IEEE Transactions, Elsevier, and IEEE PES conferences.
Research Interests
Power system operation and control
Convex relaxations in power system optimization
Smart distribution grids/Microgrids
System analysis for utility-scale renewable integration using battery energy storage
Metaheuristic optimization algorithms
Power system voltage stability
| Title | Publication | Author | Year |
|---|---|---|---|
| Adaptive Layers Based Atomic Orbital Search for the Co-Optimization of Network Reconfiguration with Battery Storage | 2024 IEEE 34th Australasian Universities Power Engineering Conference, AUPEC 2024 | Iqbal M.A., Zafar R., Pota H.R., | 2024 |
| Multi-Timescale Coordinated Control With Optimal Network Reconfiguration Using Battery Storage System in Smart Distribution Grids | IEEE Transactions on Sustainable Energy | Zafar R., Pota H.R., | 2023 |
| A Novel Radiality Maintenance Algorithm for the Metaheuristic Based Co-Optimization of Network Reconfiguration with Battery Storage | IEEE Access | Iqbal M.A., Zafar R., | 2023 |
| Trading Off Environmental and Economic Scheduling of a Renewable Energy Based Microgrid Under Uncertainties | IEEE Access | Zafar R., Esmaeel Nezhad A., Ahmadi A., Erfani T., Erfani R., | 2023 |
| Multi-timescale voltage stability-constrained volt/VAR optimization with battery storage system in distribution grids | IEEE Transactions on Sustainable Energy | Zafar R., Ravishankar J., Fletcher J.E., Pota H.R., | 2020 |
| Optimal dispatch of battery energy storage system using convex relaxations in unbalanced distribution grids | IEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics | Zafar R., Ravishankar J., Fletcher J.E., Pota H.R., | 2020 |
| Multi-timescale model predictive control of battery energy storage system using conic relaxation in smart distribution grids | IEEE Transactions on Power Systems | Zafar R., Ravishankar J., Fletcher J.E., Pota H.R., | 2018 |
| Centralized control of step voltage regulators and energy storage system under high photovoltaic penetration | IEEE PES Innovative Smart Grid Technologies Conference Europe | Zafar R., Ravishankar J., Pota H.R., | 2016 |
| Coordinated control of step voltage regulator and D-STATCOM in the presence of distributed photovoltaic systems | 2016 IEEE International Conference on Power System Technology, POWERCON 2016 | Zafar R., Ravishankar J., | 2016 |
| Evaluating wind energy potential in Pakistan's three provinces, with proposal for integration into national power grid | Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews | Shami S.H., Ahmad J., Zafar R., Haris M., Bashir S., | 2016 |
| Reduction in power transmission loss using fully informed particle swarm optimization | International Journal of Electrical Power and Energy Systems | Tehzeeb-Ul-Hassan H., Zafar R., Mohsin S.A., Lateef O., | 2012 |