Highlights

Arizona State University researcher Matthew Peet secured a $392,839 federal grant to develop new mathematical tools for predicting and preventing power grid failures, according to the National Science Foundation award record posted this month.

The three-year project, funded under NSF's Energy, Power, Control program, runs from Aug. 1, 2026, through July 31, 2029. The work targets a core problem in grid management: the underlying generator dynamics that govern large interconnected power networks are inherently nonlinear, and the computational tools used to model them scale poorly as networks grow.

Peet's approach uses converse Lyapunov theory to exploit the structural properties of a network, reducing the exponential growth in computational complexity that has historically limited stability analysis to small-scale systems. The project also proposes a class of performance metrics to characterize how these networks respond to disturbances, improving both model-based and data-driven analysis methods.

The NSF award abstract states the broader goal is to produce "improvements in our ability to predict and mitigate power grid failures, resulting in more reliable national industrial and commercial infrastructure."

ASU is listed in the award record with a Scottsdale, AZ address. The university has drawn substantial NSF investment in recent years across multiple engineering disciplines, including a separate $90.8 million award for compact X-ray laser research that the NSF described as the largest research grant in ASU's history, according to an ASU news release.

Why does power grid stability require new math?

The fundamental challenge is that energy functions used to study grid stability, called Lyapunov functions, grow exponentially in complexity as the number of generators and nodes in a network increases. Peet's project uses converse Lyapunov theory to leverage the network's own structure to contain that complexity, making large-scale analysis computationally tractable for the first time.

The award period closes July 31, 2029.

Sources

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  1. nsf.gov retrieved 12/07/2026 01:22
  2. news.asu.edu retrieved 12/07/2026 01:22

Authored by The Scottsdale Signal. Drafted by AI from primary-source material under our beat-specific editorial guides; reviewed by humans before publish under our five-gate process. Sources retrieved at 12/07/2026 01:22. Every claim traces to a source.