Reimagining the Electric Grid | Mohamadou Bella Bah | TEDxMIT

Mohamadou Bella Bah envisions a reimagined electric grid: an electric grid where our electricity needs are met by privately owned solar panels, batteries, electric vehicles, and other distributed energy resources acting in concert. Having grown up in a dozen countries, Bella has experienced mature and underdeveloped electric grids firsthand. In this talk, Bella shares some of his insights and proposes a new electric grid architecture. Mohamadou Bella Bah sees coordination problems everywhere. A Junior (2021) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) majoring in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (6-2), Bella’s research interests include artificial intelligence, multi-agent systems, and algorithms and controls for cyber-physical systems. Bella believes that many of today’s cyber-physical systems can be made fully autonomous; wherein, a human operator provides no additional instruction beyond providing the desired system state. Bella’s research addresses how to achieve coordination in networks that have numerous, diverse, and independent agents, through the interactions of autonomous and intelligent agents — particularly in the context of smart grids. Bella’s most recent project is a communications and services platform for smart grids that enables distributed energy resources to autonomously self-coordinate pursuant of demands made by a system operator. This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at https://www.ted.com/tedx