Abstract
In the 50-plus years since humans first landed on the moon, computing has grown at breakneck speed. We are faced with another challenge that is just as daunting and just as important to overcome: modernizing the North American electric power grid. High-performance computing systems with specialized software will be an important element in rising to this challenge. We describe at a high level how software developed in the ExaSGD project addresses this “moonshot” goal by utilizing exascale computing and a novel high-performance solver software stack to support the mission of decarbonizing power grid operations in an environment of uncertain weather and climate. To reach the exascale benchmark, the team has made a number of first-of-their-kind innovations, including a novel method for stochastic optimization, fine-grained parallel methods for modeling power systems, and GPU resident sparse numerical linear solvers.
