David Brown began to dig deep into the challenges of the energy transition when he began his work with GRACE, “a grid that is risk aware for clean electricity,” an ARPA-E funded initiative seeking to solve problems “prevalent in current electrical power systems.” In a kind of Oceans 11 scenario for the project, he was chosen as a team member for GRACE because of his algorithmic and analytical chops, not a career to that point delving into clean energy. That’s different now.
I’ve been inspired by the interdisciplinary aspects of the Duke Climate Commitment and I want EDGE to reflect that in how we feature, promote, and fuel faculty research across campus.
Brown is the Snow Family Business Professor at Duke’s Fuqua School of Business, where he has been on the faculty since getting his PhD from MIT in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. “I’ve always enjoyed methodological research because it provides a unique opportunity to learn about different application areas – and I’ve long had an interest in energy systems, given their complexity and importance to the world.”
“The through line of my work is optimization – I am interested in understanding how to allocate limited resources in the most efficient way, especially when facing uncertainty. In large-scale energy systems such as electric utilities, developing flexible, forward-looking methods for optimizing the mix of energy generation and storage is key to improving their efficiency, measured both in terms of costs as well as emissions.”
In Brown’s work on electricity, energy, and utilities, he seeks to understand the uncertainties of consumer usage and demand, and how climate impacts like extreme heat or hurricanes, or data centers surging because of AI upticks, are exacerbated by the intermittency of renewable energy sources like wind and solar. “How do we deal with all this information and make our utilities operate and deploy resources in a more efficient, reliable way?” Brown asks.
Through the development of optimization technology that explicitly incorporates real-time uncertainty, Brown’s research demonstrates that large utilities such as Duke Energy could lower costs by 2–3% immediately, and by 5–6% or more depending on how much renewable capacity grows in the future. “This doesn’t require massive capital investment such as new transmission capacity – just smarter algorithms in daily planning.”
Brown is also deeply interested in the role of distributed energy resources, such as rooftop solar, home batteries, and electric vehicles that can shift energy across time. “We have millions of distributed energy resources in the US alone, and utilities are actively exploring virtual power plant models,” he says. “Leveraging these resources effectively requires thoughtful incentives and methods for efficient coordination.”
Unfortunately, current regulations do not necessarily provide utilities strong incentives to improve operational efficiency. “Utilities and grid operators are sophisticated but they don’t explicitly model these uncertainties in their daily operations, primarily because it’s difficult. In this era of mass electrification, that needs to change. Our methods account for this uncertainty, and we believe properly capturing this can help to inform incentives in a way that benefits everyone.”
In addition to his research and teaching, Brown also serves as Faculty Director for the Center for Energy Development in the Global Environment (EDGE) at Duke’s The Fuqua School of Business. His ambitions for EDGE parallel those for how he imagines how his algorithms might alter the utility industry. “EDGE has been an amazing, student-focused enterprise from the outset and that won’t change, especially with Duke launching a new joint master’s degree in business, climate, and sustainability,” Brown says. “I’ve been inspired by the interdisciplinary aspects of the Duke Climate Commitment and I want EDGE to reflect that in how we feature, promote, and fuel faculty research across campus.”
Brown reflects on his faculty role and its evolution in the context of Duke today, “it’s important to continue to advance state-of-the-art knowledge through traditional outlets, such as publishing in peer-reviewed journals. At the same time, especially when it comes to energy and sustainability solutions, we want these technologies actually deployed in practice to positively impact the world.”
Photos courtesy of David Brown.