The core of the innovation lies in the hybridization of two distinct metaheuristic algorithms. Particle Swarm Optimization is known for its rapid convergence but is prone to getting trapped in local optima, while Grey Wolf Optimization offers robust global exploration but can be slower in refining solutions. By integrating the hierarchical leadership mechanism of GWO with the velocity-update mechanism of PSO, the researchers created a unified optimizer that balances global exploration with local exploitation. This hybrid approach allows the algorithm to navigate complex, nonlinear search spaces more effectively, identifying optimal controller gains that minimize frequency deviations and tie-line power oscillations in interconnected power areas.

The study models an unequal two-area power system where Area 1 consists of thermal, hydro, and electric vehicle units, while Area 2 integrates wind, photovoltaic, diesel, and hydrogen-based energy storage. This configuration reflects the complexity of modern grids, where diverse generation sources and storage technologies must work in concert to maintain balance. The researchers used MATLAB/Simulink to simulate the system, incorporating transfer function models for each component, including an aqua electrolyzer and fuel cell for hydrogen storage. The objective was to minimize the Integral of Time-weighted Absolute Error, a metric that penalizes prolonged frequency excursions, which are operationally damaging to grid stability.

When tested under step load disturbances in Area 1, the hybrid GWO-PSO algorithm demonstrated remarkable performance. It achieved the lowest objective value with an ITAE of 0.29888, representing a 71% reduction compared to the PSO-only approach and a 28.1% reduction compared to the Slime Mould Algorithm. In terms of time-domain response, the hybrid controller reduced the frequency settling time to 4.6 seconds, outperforming both PSO and SMA. The frequency in Area 1 remained between 55.5 Hz and 62.5 Hz, while Area 2 exhibited the lowest peak frequency of 60.5 Hz among all tested optimizers, indicating superior damping of inter-area coupling effects. These results suggest that the hybrid algorithm can more effectively manage the dynamic interactions between different power sources and storage units.

The integration of hydrogen storage via an aqua electrolyzer and fuel cell played a significant role in the system’s stability. During grid imbalances, the electrolyzer acts as a controllable load, absorbing excess power to produce hydrogen, which can later be converted back to electricity by the fuel cell. Under the GWO-PSO tuning, the electrolyzer delivered a peak hydrogen production of 1.7 × 10⁻³ kg/s within two seconds of the disturbance, providing rapid grid support. This dual-phase behavior, characterized by a high-amplitude transient response followed by sustained steady-state production, effectively combines the fast initial response of PSO-optimized systems with the stable long-term output of SMA-optimized systems, enhancing the overall resilience of the power system.

Electric vehicle units were also included as a fast-acting resource in the control loop. The study found that EVs have a material impact on steady-state frequency regulation, helping to eradicate persistent frequency offsets that other storage technologies might not address. An ablation study revealed that disabling the EV units led to a non-decaying offset in Area 1 frequency, resulting in a significantly higher ITAE value. This highlights the importance of treating EV fleets as first-class resources in AGC design, rather than merely as secondary loads. The hybrid controller effectively coordinated the EVs and hydrogen storage to ensure that the system returned to nominal frequency quickly and accurately, even under significant disturbances.

Further analysis under simultaneous step load disturbances in both areas showed that the GWO-PSO controller maintained robust performance. The frequency settling time was reduced to 5.0 seconds, compared to 7.0 seconds for PSO and 6.0 seconds for SMA. The tie-line power settled within 3.8 seconds, demonstrating the controller’s ability to manage inter-area power flows efficiently. The hybrid algorithm consistently selected higher proportional and integral gains than PSO, indicating that it identifies more aggressive yet stable control actions. This allows the system to recover swiftly without sacrificing steady-state accuracy, which is crucial for maintaining reliability in renewable-dominated grids.

Sensitivity analyses confirmed the robustness of the proposed controller under varying conditions. When renewable penetration and system inertia were perturbed by ±20%, the controller remained stable, with performance declining gradually rather than suddenly. The system was found to be more sensitive to inertia variations than to load-damping uncertainties, but it handled both types of perturbations effectively. Additionally, the controller showed low sensitivity to load disturbance amplitudes, with ITAE values varying by less than 1% across different disturbance levels. This consistency suggests that the hybrid GWO-PSO approach is well-suited for real-world applications where grid conditions are constantly changing.

The computational complexity of the hybrid algorithm was also evaluated. A full optimization run took approximately 2.21 hours, dominated by the cost of simulation rather than algorithmic overhead. However, since this tuning is performed offline, it does not impact real-time AGC operations. The convergence characteristics of the hybrid algorithm were superior to its components, achieving the lowest final ITAE while maintaining a convergence speed comparable to GWO alone. This indicates that the hybridization provides genuine benefits in solution quality without compromising convergence speed, making it a practical tool for grid operators seeking to enhance frequency regulation in complex, multi-source power systems.

In conclusion, the study demonstrates that hybrid metaheuristic tuning offers a viable path toward more resilient frequency regulation in renewable-integrated power systems. By combining the strengths of GWO and PSO, the proposed algorithm effectively optimizes PID controller gains to handle the dynamic complexities of modern grids. The integration of diverse generation sources and storage technologies, along with the careful tuning of control parameters, ensures that the system can maintain stability and efficiency even under significant disturbances. This research provides valuable insights for grid operators and engineers working to integrate higher percentages of renewable energy into the power grid, offering a practical and deployable solution for maintaining grid stability in an increasingly complex energy landscape.

Subject of Research: Optimization of automatic generation control in renewable-integrated power systems using a hybrid GWO-PSO algorithm

Article Title: Optimization of automatic generation control in renewable-integrated power systems using a hybrid GWO–PSO algorithm

Article References: Uddin, M. I., Imam, A. A., Alabdullah, F. T., Messini, E. M. B., Alyamani, N., & Almohammedali, M. A. (2026). Optimization of automatic generation control in renewable-integrated power systems using a hybrid GWO–PSO algorithm. Results in Engineering, 32, Article 113439. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rineng.2026.113439

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1016/j.rineng.2026.113439

Keywords: automatic generation control, renewable energy, power systems, hybrid optimization, PID controller, frequency stability, hydrogen storage, electric vehicles, metaheuristic algorithms, grid resilience, Optimization, automatic

The authors set out to test a claim that has become common in space-settlement circles: that the Moon, with its 37.93 million square kilometers of surface, an area about half again larger than North America, offers resources so vast that industry and population could grow without meaningful constraint. High-profile entrepreneurs have promoted exactly that vision, from relocating heavy industry to the lunar surface to building self-expanding cities there. To make an economic difference on a planetary scale, such plans implicitly require settlements of tens of millions of people. Elvis and McDowell instead grounded the question in three concrete parameters: how much power a lunar city would need, how much water, and how long a settlement must last to count as sustainable.

Power, the first variable, turns out to be surprisingly manageable. A typical American uses between 0.25 and 0.80 kilowatts of electricity for domestic purposes, with the high end reflecting homes in extreme heating or cooling climates. Because lunar surface temperatures swing across nearly 300 degrees, from about 95 kelvin to 387 kelvin, the authors conservatively adopted the high-end figure, giving 800 megawatts for a million residents. Agriculture adds only a modest 64 watts per person based on US energy statistics, and even if industry consumes 1.6 times the domestic rate, the total comes to roughly 2.1 gigawatts. Space-based data centers, each demanding gigawatt-level supplies, could eventually dominate the ledger, but the basic needs of a city remain within reach of available technology.

Two power sources exist on the Moon today: solar photovoltaics and nuclear fission. The Moon’s tiny axial tilt of just 1.5 degrees keeps the Sun circling near the horizon at the poles, so elevated terrain there, the so-called Peaks of Eternal Light, enjoys nearly continuous illumination. Low gravity permits solar arrays mounted on towers up to a kilometer tall, taller than the Burj Khalifa, that rotate to follow the Sun. Detailed modeling of the lunar south pole suggests such arrays could deliver a mean of about 3 gigawatts roughly 90 percent of the time, enough for a million people if industry stays modest. Fission reactors offer an alternative independent of location, though a 3-gigawatt fleet would need on the order of 7.5 square kilometers of radiators, which the frigid, permanently shadowed crater floors are well suited to host, plus about 24 tons of fuel per year per gigawatt. Either way, the authors conclude, power is only a weak constraint on lunar population.

Water is another matter entirely. Estimates of lunar ice rest on three complementary techniques: reflectance spectroscopy, which senses frost in the top microns to millimeters of soil; neutron absorption, which probes one to two meters by counting hydrogen atoms; and ground-penetrating radar, sensitive to meter-scale ice blocks down to tens of meters. Radar on India’s Chandrayaan-1 orbiter produced the first solid claim in 2013, suggesting several hundred million tons near the south pole. Subsequent ultraviolet and near-infrared observations from NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter and Chandrayaan-1’s Moon Mineralogy Mapper confirmed exposed ice, while recent ShadowCam imaging found water confirmed in only 3.5 percent of cold traps, though those deposits may hold up to 30 percent ice by weight mixed into the regolith.

The most careful synthesis to date, a 2022 meta-analysis of 65 large permanently shadowed regions, ranked craters by temperature and volatile potential and estimated that the eight richest, including Amundsen, Cabeus, Shoemaker, and Sverdrup, together hold on the order of 34 million tons of water. Even allowing generous margins, the authors adopt one billion tons as a deliberately optimistic baseline, roughly a cubic kilometer, enough to fill Manhattan’s Central Park to a depth of 120 meters. Not all of that ice would even be recoverable; oil fields typically extract only a third to a half of what they contain, and lunar mining fractions are unknown until drill bits meet the ice-regolith mixture in person.

Consumption math then turns brutal. A typical American directly uses about 125 tons of water per year for drinking and hygiene. Breathing adds another 1.8 tons per person annually, since every oxygen molecule inhaled must ultimately be regenerated from water. Food dominates everything: feeding one person requires 2 to 5 tons of water per day on Earth, and even assuming improved cultivation halves the low end, a lunar settler would consume roughly 500 tons per year in total. At that rate, one million people would exhaust the entire known lunar water supply in just 2.4 years without recycling. Rocket propellant, often cited as lunar water’s killer app, is far less demanding: a billion tons could fuel nearly a million Starship-class launches, about three per day for a thousand years, making water effectively abundant for that purpose alone.

Recycling changes the timeline but not the verdict. The International Space Station’s Environmental Control and Life Support System recovered 94 percent of water until 2023, when the addition of a Brine Processor Assembly pushed efficiency to 98 percent per cycle, a major engineering triumph that cut losses threefold. Yet even at 98 percent, a million-person city drains a billion tons in about a century, while a smaller settlement of 100,000 people could stretch the same supply to a thousand years. Reaching a millennium for a million residents would require efficiency above 99.75 percent, a tenfold reduction in losses that would be extraordinarily difficult to achieve and maintain, particularly since a real lunar base with laundry, showers, and low-gravity plumbing would likely perform worse than the ISS, not better.

The authors weigh the escape routes. Importing water is conceivable but staggering: sustaining a million people at ISS-level recycling means landing 10 million tons per year, roughly 27 heavy landers every Earth day. Finding more lunar water is possible, since neutron and radar instruments probe only the top few meters and the Apollo 17 sounder once reached a kilometer deep, but a tenfold increase over current estimates seems a stretch. Slashing demand through vertical farming, which one facility claims uses 97 percent less water than conventional agriculture, and through low-meat or lab-grown diets could help substantially, since beef requires at least six times the water of soybeans per kilogram. Lava tube habitats ease power needs but would still draw on the same finite polar ice.

The upshot is a sharply bounded vision of lunar settlement. A research outpost of about a thousand people, comparable to Antarctica’s winter population, could use lunar water relatively freely. A town of 100,000 demands careful stewardship. A true city of one million appears unsupportable beyond roughly a century unless recycling improves tenfold, imports arrive at industrial scale, or a vast hidden reservoir is discovered. Elvis and McDowell argue that this reality demands governance: humanity must plan, regulate, and share the lunar water supply rather than treat it as first come, first served. The Moon may host outposts and even villages, they conclude, but its ice is a precious, finite trust, not an infinite foundation for metropolises.

Subject of Research: Sustainability limits of lunar water resources for large-scale human settlement on the Moon

Article Title: No cities on the Moon: a billion tons of water is not enough for sustainability

Article References: Elvis, M., & McDowell, J. C. (2026). No cities on the Moon: a billion tons of water is not enough for sustainability. Frontiers in Space Technologies, 7, Article 1894104. https://doi.org/10.3389/frspt.2026.1894104

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.3389/frspt.2026.1894104

Keywords: Moon, lunar water, permanently shadowed regions, water recycling, space settlement, lunar poles, sustainability, ISS life support, space resources, lunar ice mining, power systems, Frontiers in Space Technologies

The award places FAU among a select group of institutions. It is one of only nine organizations in eight states chosen for NIST’s Regional Alliances and Multistakeholder Partnerships to Stimulate, or RAMPS, Cybersecurity Education and Workforce Development program. The RAMPS model is deliberately regional: rather than funding isolated courses, it builds on existing workforce partnerships to connect employers, educators and community organizations so that local cybersecurity education translates directly into local career pathways. In the case of FAU, that means knitting together a university with growing quantum capabilities, a major quantum computing company, school districts, utilities, federal law enforcement outreach networks and community organizations into a single talent pipeline.

Timing is central to the project’s logic. Quantum computing is advancing from laboratory curiosity toward practical application, and with that transition comes a class of cybersecurity challenges that today’s workforce is largely unprepared to address. Quantum systems will not merely accelerate computation; they will change the assumptions on which much of modern cryptography and infrastructure protection rests. At the same time, the emergence of quantum techniques creates new attack surfaces and new defensive tools that security professionals will need to understand. Yet, as FAU researchers note, few workforce development programs anywhere provide hands-on training that integrates quantum computing, cybersecurity and critical infrastructure protection in one curriculum. The FAU project, titled Building the Quantum Cybersecurity Workforce in the Palm Beach and Treasure Coast Region, is designed to fill precisely that gap.

A distinguishing feature of the initiative is the hardware behind it. Through its partnership with D-Wave Quantum Inc., a publicly traded quantum computing company, FAU will become the first university in Florida to publicly host a dedicated annealing quantum computer, a D-Wave Advantage2 system with more than 4,400 qubits, on its Boca Raton campus. Annealing quantum computers differ from the gate-based machines developed by other vendors; they are engineered specifically for optimization problems, exploring vast solution spaces to find configurations that minimize a defined cost function. That makes them directly relevant to problems in power grid management, logistics and scheduling, and it also makes them a realistic platform on which students can study how quantum systems behave, how they can be secured and how they might be used or misused in attacks on infrastructure.

Stella Batalama, dean of FAU’s College of Engineering and Computer Science, framed the award as a natural extension of the university’s existing investments. According to Batalama, the NIST award builds directly on Florida Atlantic’s commitment to quantum computing and the college’s strengths in cybersecurity, artificial intelligence, advanced computing and power infrastructure systems. With the D-Wave Advantage2 quantum computer arriving on the Boca Raton campus, she said, the university is building the infrastructure, expertise and workforce needed for the next generation of computing, and the new initiative extends that investment into quantum cybersecurity by giving students and professionals hands-on experience with emerging technologies while preparing the talent needed to protect critical systems.

The project will be led by Yufei Tang, principal investigator, associate professor in FAU’s Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, director of the FPL Center for Intelligent Energy Technologies, known as InETech, and faculty fellow of FAU’s Institute for Smarter Cities, Spaces, and Health. Co-principal investigators are Hari Kalva, chair and professor, and Zebo Yang, assistant professor, both from the same department. Tang’s dual role is telling: the InETech Center provides a real-world research and training environment for power and energy systems, including advanced simulation and hardware-in-the-loop capabilities, which means participants can experiment on faithful replicas of grid infrastructure rather than abstract models. Hardware-in-the-loop testing, in which physical control devices are connected to simulated power systems in real time, is a standard technique for validating grid cybersecurity, and coupling it with quantum computing resources is an unusual and technically ambitious combination.

Tang described the educational challenge in stark terms. Quantum computing, he said, is changing not only what computers can do but also what cybersecurity professionals need to know. The project will bring together quantum computing, cybersecurity and critical-infrastructure expertise to give participants practical experience with technologies and security challenges that are emerging now. By combining hands-on training, real-world case studies, access to quantum computing resources and direct engagement with industry and government partners, the team aims to produce a workforce prepared to secure systems in a quantum-enabled future. That formulation reflects a growing consensus among standards bodies, including NIST itself, that the transition to post-quantum cryptography and quantum-aware security practices will require years of preparation across both the public and private sectors.

D-Wave’s involvement signals the industry dimension of the effort. Allison Schwartz, the company’s senior vice president of global government relations and public affairs, said D-Wave is proud to partner with FAU on preparing the next generation of quantum and cybersecurity professionals. As quantum computing moves from research laboratories into real-world applications, she noted, developing a workforce that understands both the opportunities and the cybersecurity implications of these technologies is essential. By combining D-Wave’s quantum technologies with FAU’s academic strengths and regional partnerships, the program is intended to create a pipeline of talent equipped to address the challenges and opportunities of the quantum era. For students, access to a production-grade annealing system rather than a cloud simulator represents a meaningful difference in training fidelity.

The consortium assembled around the project is unusually broad. Key partners include D-Wave; the InfraGard South Florida Members Alliance, which connects the FBI with private-sector critical infrastructure stakeholders; the School District of Palm Beach County; Broward County Public Schools; and Alexander D. Henderson University School, FAU’s public laboratory school serving elementary and middle school students. The inclusion of K-12 partners means the program is not aimed solely at university students and working professionals but also at early pipeline development, introducing younger students to quantum and cybersecurity concepts before they reach college. On the professional side, the project will build on FAU’s established cybersecurity workforce programs, including its National Science Foundation-supported CyberCorps Scholarship for Service and CyberTraining initiatives, layering quantum content onto proven structures.

Concretely, the initiative will deliver a hands-on Quantum Cybersecurity Workshop Series along with reusable curriculum, case studies and online training materials aligned with the NICE Workforce Framework for Cybersecurity and CyberSeek, the federal tools that standardize cybersecurity roles, skills and career pathways. Participants will also have access to mentoring, internships and employer engagement, while a regional consortium will connect universities, K-12 schools, industry, government, utilities and community organizations across the served counties. Crucially, the NIST-funded project is designed to outlast the grant itself: the shared curriculum, online training, employer engagement mechanisms and the regional consortium are intended to establish a lasting framework for quantum cybersecurity workforce development in South Florida. For FAU, the award reinforces a broader ambition. The university, which serves more than 32,000 students and holds R1 research status, has positioned itself as Florida’s first quantum university, and through its Center for Quantum Technologies it continues to bring together faculty, students and industry partners to advance quantum research and prepare the workforce for an emerging quantum economy in which security, not just computation, will be the defining challenge.

Subject of Research: Quantum cybersecurity workforce development funded by a NIST grant at Florida Atlantic University

Article Title: FAU receives NIST grant to build South Florida’s quantum cybersecurity workforce

Article References: FAU receives NIST grant to build South Florida’s quantum cybersecurity workforce. (n.d.). Original publication

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: Not provided

Keywords: quantum computing, cybersecurity, NIST, Florida Atlantic University, D-Wave, workforce development, critical infrastructure, post-quantum cryptography, STEM education, South Florida, annealing quantum computer, power systems