Murali Baggu is the Laboratory Program Manager for grid integration at NREL. In this role, he manages the Department of Energy Office of Electricity, Grid Deployment Office and Grid Modernization Initiative programs at NREL. He currently leads NREL’s Advanced Distribution Management Systems (ADMS) research and Puerto Rico Grid Recovery and Resilience efforts. He is also one of the principal investigators for the Puerto Rico Grid Resilience and Transitions to 100% Renewable Energy Study (PR100) by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Grid Deployment Office and six national laboratories to comprehensively analyze stakeholder-driven pathways to Puerto Rico’s clean energy future. Baggu has extensive experience in advanced grid control and evaluation for future power systems with high levels of distributed energy resources (DERs). This includes ADMS, microgrid applications, and energy-storage applications.

Before joining NREL, Baggu worked as a lead power systems engineer at GE Global Research, where he developed advanced Volt/VAR control and DER management algorithms. At GE, he also led the technology development and deployment of large-scale energy storage integration with photovoltaic systems for the U.S. Marine Corps.

Baggu’s research interests include grid integration of distributed energy systems, energy storage system integration, distribution automation and grid operations and control. He has five patents and more than fifty publications in these areas of research. He holds a Ph.D. in power engineering from Missouri S&T.

Research Interests

Distribution automation

Grid resilience

Grid operations and control

Grid integration of renewable energy systems (wind and solar photovoltaics)

Grid integration of energy storage systems

Education

Ph.D., Power Engineering, Missouri University of Science and Technology

Associations and Memberships

Associate Editor for the IEEE Transactions on Sustainable Energy Journal

Senior member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and past chair of IEEE Distribution System Operation & Planning sub-committee (2019-2022)

Featured Work

"PR100 One-Year Progress Summary Report," NREL Fact Sheet (2023)

"Evaluation of Data-Enhanced Hierarchical Control for Distribution Feeders With High PV Penetration," IEEE Access (2022)

“Coordinated Optimization of Multiservice Dispatch of Energy Storage Systems with Degradation for Utility Applications,” IEEE Transactions on Sustainable Energy (2019)

“Coordinated utilization of smart inverter with legacy voltage control devices in distribution systems with high distributed PV penetration – increase CVR energy savings,” IEEE Transactions on Smart Grid (2018)

“Comparison of Advanced Control Techniques for Grid Side Converter of Doubly-Fed Induction Generator Back-to-Back Converters to Improve Power Quality Performance During Unbalanced Voltage Dips,” IEEE Journal on Emerging and Selected Topics in Power Electronics (2015)