Keynote Speakers
CPE-POWERENG 2023 offers an extensive keynote program represented by world-renowned experts in power electronics and power systems.
Power Electronics as the enabling technology for a modern carbon neutral society
Frede Blaabjerg, Aalborg University, Denmark
Frede Blaabjerg (S’86–M’88–SM’97–F’03) was with ABB-Scandia, Randers, Denmark, from 1987 to 1988. From 1988 to 1992, he got the PhD degree in Electrical Engineering at Aalborg University in 1995. He became an Assistant Professor in 1992, an Associate Professor in 1996, and a Full Professor of power electronics and drives in 1998 at AAU Energy. From 2017 he became a Villum Investigator. He is honoris causa at University Politehnica Timisoara (UPT), Romania in 2017 and Tallinn Technical University (TTU), Estonia in 2018.
His current research interests include power electronics and its applications such as in wind turbines, PV systems, reliability, harmonics and adjustable speed drives. He has published more than 600 journal papers in the fields of power electronics and its applications. He is the co-author of four monographs and editor of ten books in power electronics and its applications.
He has received 38 IEEE Prize Paper Awards, the IEEE PELS Distinguished Service Award in 2009, the EPE-PEMC Council Award in 2010, the IEEE William E. Newell Power Electronics Award 2014, the Villum Kann Rasmussen Research Award 2014, the Global Energy Prize in 2019 and the 2020 IEEE Edison Medal. He was the Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER ELECTRONICS from 2006 to 2012. He has been Distinguished Lecturer for the IEEE Power Electronics Society from 2005 to 2007 and for the IEEE Industry Applications Society from 2010 to 2011 as well as 2017 to 2018. In 2019-2020 he served as a President of IEEE Power Electronics Society. He has been Vice-President of the Danish Academy of Technical Sciences.
He is nominated in 2014-2021 by Thomson Reuters to be between the most 250 cited researchers in Engineering in the world.
Abstract:
The global energy system is undergoing a significant transition in order to be carbon neutral – and with at least two consequences. The energy generation will be renewables and much more energy will be carried by electricity. In order to control electricity we need electrical energy conversion and thereby the key enabling technology - Power Electronics. The presentation will discuss the power electronics technology, where it is applied and what are the main future challenges for the technology in the efforts to create a carbon neutral society – which is believed to be dominantly electrical based. Topics to be covered will be renewable energy systems, power-2-X and Reliable Power Electronic Based Power Systems.
Materializing the Vision of “Flying Carpets” — Ultra-Lightweight/Efficient Power Electronics Enabling Future Urban Transport
Johann W. Kolar, ETH Zürich, Switzerland
Johann W. Kolar is a Fellow of the IEEE, an International Member of the US NAE and a Full Professor and Head of the Power Electronic Systems Laboratory at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) Zürich.
He has proposed numerous novel converter concepts, incl. the Vienna Rectifier, spearheaded the development of x-million rpm motors, and pioneered fully automated multi-objective power electronics design procedures. He has supervised 85 Ph.D. students to completion, has published 1000+ IEEE journal and conference papers, 4 book chapters, and has filed 200+ patents.
He has served as IEEE PELS Distinguished Lecturer from 2012 - 2016. He has received numerous awards, incl. 45 IEEE transactions and conference Prize Paper Awards, the 2016 IEEE William E. Newell Power Electronics Award, and 2 ETH Zurich Golden Owl Awards for excellence in teaching. The focus of his current research is on ultra-compact/efficient WBG converter systems, ANN-based design procedures, Solid-State Transformers, ultra-high speed drives, bearingless actuators, and life cycle analysis of power electronics converter systems.
Abstract:
Urban Air Mobility (UAM) based on electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) aircraft – a 21st century materialization of the legendary “Magic/Flying Carpet” – are based on multi-rotor or tilt-rotor/duct/wing designs, can carry four to six occupants and operate from vertiports without runways. Compared to terrestrial alternatives, this allows for a two- to six-fold faster means of point-to-point mobility. Aircraft electrification enables considerably higher overall efficiency as a larger number of small high-efficiency electric motors, i.e., distributed electric propulsion, can be used instead of conventional low-efficiency combustion-based propulsion architectures with few large units, resulting in reduced drag and greater flexibility to leverage the benefits of aero-propulsive coupling. Accordingly, urban and regional eVTOL aerial travel services are expected to massively expand over the next decades.
The talk first introduces key eVTOL aircraft designs currently in the R&D, prototyping or production planning phases, discusses trade-offs of key performance indicators like range and payload using first-order principles and highlights critical enabling technologies like high gravimetric energy density and/or high-power-density batteries and fuel cells, low-specific-weight electric motors, and advanced power electronics. Hybrid battery/fuel cell power supplies of eVTOL aircraft enable high peak power capability as well as long-range operation. However, the typically wide and overlapping voltage ranges of the batteries and the fuel cells require interconnecting bidirectional DC-DC converters with buck-boost capability.
Accordingly, the second part of the presentation comparatively evaluates performance limits of fully soft-switched, flying-capacitor-multilevel, and partial-power-processing buck-boost candidate converter topologies by means of comprehensive Pareto optimizations considering mission profile efficiency and gravimetric power density, and finally presents a 15kW 450V...730V / 480V...800V three-level flying capacitor converter module of a 150kW system featuring 98.5% efficiency and an unprecedented gravimetric power density of 62kW/kg.
Finally, a summary of first assessments of the primary energy and Greenhouse Gas Emissions impacts of eVTOLs vs. ground-based light-duty vehicles for passenger mobility is presented, which surprisingly indicates partly higher energy efficiencies than equivalent terrestrial alternatives at faster and more predictable travel times, and indicates a possible niche role of eVTOLs in future sustainable urban transportation.
SURFACE Power Delivery, The Future of High-Performance Computing
José A. Cobos, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Spain
José Antonio Cobos (Fellow, IEEE) is a Full Professor with the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid and Founder of the company DPx (Differential Power S.L.). He was RCC Fellow at Harvard University and Fulbrighter at UC Berkeley.
His contributions are focused on the field of power supply systems for industrial, aerospace, telecom, automotive, renewable energy and medical applications. His research interests include energy efficiency in digital systems and RF amplifiers, magnetic components, piezoelectric transformers, transcutaneous energy transfer and the generation of EM fields for water supercooling and biomedical applications. He advised over 50 Master Thesis, 16 Doctoral dissertations, published 300+ technical papers and hold patents co-authored with 8 companies. He conducted professional seminars and tutorials in USA, UK, Austria, Germany, Italy, Sweden, Switzerland, Syria, Mexico, Denmark, Macedonia and China.
In 2006, he was the founder Director of the “Centro de Electrónica Industrial, CEI-UPM”, a university research center leading a strong industrial program in power electronics and digital systems. In 2016, he was the founder President of the “Industrial Council @ CEI” to coordinate Education & Research with Industry. In 2019, he started DPx, a startup from UPM to synthesize advanced power converters for high performance computing.
Abstract:
High performance computing requires high performance dc-dc power converters, supplying low voltages 0.5-1.2V with AVS (adaptive voltage scaling), high current (up to 2000A) with very demanding load steps (up to 5000A/us) and very high and variable voltage gain (from 40 to 120) to regulate an input voltage in the range 40-60V. Low losses (peak efficiency >97%) and high surface current density (>1A/mm2) complete these high performance requirements.
Proposed “SURFACE power delivery” is an extension of the “VERTICAL power delivery” trend that is replacing “LATERAL power delivery” in high current applications to reduce copper losses in the power delivery path.
Three novel concepts are described in this talk: a) “extended duty cycle” (60-95%) in both primary and secondary power switches; b) “segmented winding transformer, SWT” and c) “edge dynamics”. These three concepts are implemented in a novel “Direct Power Converter with High Voltage inside, DPx-HV”.
Principles of Wireless Power Transfer in Applications with "Almost Known" Coupling
Alon Kuperman, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel
Alon Kuperman (Senior Member, IEEE) is a Full Professor with the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beer-Sheva, Israel and the Director of Applied Energy Laboratory. He holds multiple international patents and owns an independent consultancy services company. He is also a co-founder of two start-up companies focusing on wireless power transfer. His research interests include all aspects of energy conversion and applied control.
Abstract:
Inductive wireless power transfer technology is rapidly gaining popularity nowadays, being applied in systems where conventional power transfer is impossible or undesirable. In some applications (e.g., power transfer through rigid barriers, electric vehicles charging with automatic alignment, etc.) coil's coupling coefficient remains nearly constant and thus "almost known," allowing the inductive wireless power transfer link to be simplified while theoretically attaining load-independent voltage/current output without feedback. However, the range of attainable output current/voltage values is typically limited for a given input voltage. Moreover, practical effects such as parasitics and system nonlinearity under light loading may impose the use of feedback. Consequently, the talk focuses on operational principles and design trade-offs of inductive wireless power transfer links operating with "almost known" coupling.
IES SYP Morning Keynote Speakers
IES SYP Morning will be organized during the CPE-POWERENG 2023 for the first time. It will include three tutorials from world-renowned experts in power electronics and power systems for students and young professionals.
Envisioning the Future Renewable and Resilient Energy Grids —
A Power Grid Revolution Enabled by Renewables, Energy Storage, and Power Electronics
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Chen-Ching Liu Virginia Tech USA |
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Fang Z. Peng Florida State University USA |
Chen-Ching Liu (Fellow, IEEE) is American Electric Power Professor and Director, Power and Energy Center, at Virginia Tech. During 1983-2017, he was on the faculty of University of Washington, Iowa State University, University College Dublin (Ireland), and Washington State University.
Professor Liu received an IEEE Third Millennium Medal in 2000 and the Power and Energy Society Outstanding Power Engineering Educator Award in 2004. He chaired the IEEE Power and Energy Society Fellow Committee, Technical Committee on Power System Analysis, Computing and Economics, and Outstanding Power Engineering Educator Award Committee. Professor Liu is the U.S. representative on the CIGRE Study Committee D2, Information Systems and Telecommunication.
He is a Life Fellow of the IEEE, Member of Virginia Academy of Science, Engineering, and Medicine, and Member of the U.S. National Academy of Engineering.
Fang Z. Peng (M’92–SM’96–F’05) received the B.S. degree in electrical engineering from Wuhan University, China, in 1983 and the M.S. and Ph.D. Degrees in electrical engineering from Nagaoka University of Technology, Japan, in 1987 and 1990, respectively.
From 1990 to 1992, he was a Research Scientist with Toyo Electric Manufacturing Company, Ltd., Japan, and engaged in the research, development, and commercialization of active power filters, flexible ac transmission system (FACTS) applications, and motor drives. From 1992 to 1994, he was a Research Assistant Professor at the Tokyo Institute of Technology, Japan, and he initiated a multilevel inverter program for FACTS applications and speed-sensorless vector control of motors. From 1994 to 2000, he was with the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, the Lead (Principal) Scientist for the Power Electronics and Electric Machinery Research Center from 1997 to 2000. In 2000, he became an Associate Professor at Michigan State University, where he founded and directed the Power Electronics and Motor Drives Center. He became a Full Professor in 2006 and was designated as a University Distinguished Professor in 2012.
Since 2018, Dr. Peng has been with Florida State University as the inaugural Distinguished Professor of Engineering.
Abstract:
Today’s power grids are facing tremendous challenges and barriers in terms of the system complexity, infrastructure cost, “worst-case problem,” knowledge base, and policy issues to achieve instant supply-demand power balance and resiliency with respect to extreme weather events and cyber-attacks, especially when the transition to 100% intermittent renewable energy sources is considered. To transform and revolutionize the existing power grids, we propose the concept of community-centric asynchronous renewable and resilient energy grids with Natural Source frequencies (NSf), energy storage, Direct energy Conversion and Fault protection (DeCaF), and high efficiency Energy Consumption and Buffering (heCaB) technology, to transform the existing synchronous power grids to asynchronous energy grids. The proposed energy grid concept has the potential to 1) greatly reduce power outages and power system restoration time, 2) increase energy delivery capacity by many folds with the existing power grid infrastructure, 3) achieve much more efficient integration of all-electric transportation to energy grids and increase renewable energy plus energy storage capacity to 100%. From device to the system level, we further explore the energy grid concept by preliminary investigation of NSf energy transmission, delivery, energy storage, power electronics-enabled DeCaF and heCaB device implementation, and system level issues such as community centric resilient networked microgrids and cyber security. Finally, we discuss important research topics for the proposed asynchronous energy grids.
Smart Battery — The Next Generation of Battery Management Technology!
Remus Teodorescu, Aalborg University, Denmark
Remus Teodorescu (Fellow, IEEE) received the Dipl.Ing. degree in electrical engineering from the Polytechnical University of Bucharest, Bucharest, Romania, in 1989, Ph.D. degree in power electronics from the University of Galati, Romania, in 1994 and , Dr.HC in 2016 from Transilvania University of Brasov. In 1998, he joined the Department of Energy Technology at Aalborg University, where he is currently a Full Professor. Between 2013 and 2017, he has been a Visiting Professor at Chalmers University.
He has been IEEE/PELS Fellow since 2012 for contributions to grid converters technology for renewable energy systems.
In 2022 he became a Villum Investigator and leader of Center of Research for Smart Battery at Aalborg University.
His main current research areas are: AI-based Smart Battery and Modular Multilevel Converters (MMC) for HVDC/FACTS
Abstract:
Lithium-ion batteries are extensively used in a wide range of applications from portable electronics to electric vehicles and grid storage systems. Although the performance parameters in terms of energy density and cost have almost met the targets, the still remaining challenges are improved safety and longer lifetime. Especially for battery packs with many cells, the degradation process is accelerated due to the difference between cells electrical characteristics leading to a limited lifetime and safety issues.
This keynote introduces the novel concept of Smart Battery that combines batteries with advanced power electronics and artificial intelligence (AI) with the purpose to develop a new generation of battery management solutions for transportation and grid storage with extended lifetime. The key feature is the bypass device, a half-bridge parallel to each cell, for cell-level load management without affecting the load. Bypassing cells results in pulsed current that is known to reduce the pace of the degradation mechanisms (LAM, LLI) leading to extended lifetime. The first step is to use the bypass device for high-efficiency balancing in more dimensions including SoC, SoT and SoH with some extended lifetime as a consequence. The second step is to show how a reward-based optimization like AI Reinforcement Learning, trained to recognize early signs of stressed cells and decide to insert optimal amount of relaxation time with significant lifetime extension as outcome. The smart battery technology is currently at proof of concept stage.
Digital Energy
Pavol Bauer, TU Delft, The Netherlands
Pavol Bauer is currently a full Professor with the Department of Electrical Sustainable Energy of Delft University of Technology and head of DC Systems, Energy Conversion and Storage group. He is also professor in Czech Republic and honorary professor at Politehnica University Timisioira in Romania where he got also a honorary doctorate (Dr.h.c). From 2002 to 2003 he was working partially at KEMA (DNV GL, Arnhem) on different projects related to power electronics applications in power systems.
He published over 170 journal and over 500 conference papers in his field (with H factor Google scholar 54, Web of Science 40), he is an author or co-author of 8 books, holds 10 international patents and organized several tutorials at the international conferences. He has worked on many projects for industry concerning wind and wave energy, power electronic applications for power systems such as Smarttrafo; HVDC systems, projects for smart cities such as PV charging of electric vehicles, PV and storage integration, contactless charging; and he participated in several Leonardo da Vinci, H2020 and Electric Mobility Europe EU projects as project partner (ELINA, INETELE, E-Pragmatic, Micact, Trolly 2.0, OSCD, P2P, Progressus, Tulip, Flow) and coordinator (PEMCWebLab.com-Edipe, SustEner, Eranet DCMICRO). His main research interest is power electronics for charging of electric vehicles and DC grids.
He is a Senior Member of the IEEE (’97), former chairman of Benelux IEEE Joint Industry Applications Society, Power Electronics and Power Engineering Society chapter, chairman of the Power Electronics and Motion Control (PEMC) council, chairman of Benelux IEEE Industrial Electronics chapter, member of the Executive Committee of European Power Electronics Association (EPE) and also member of international steering committee at numerous conferences.
Abstract:
The shift towards an energy system based on renewable sources is a shift from a hierarchically controlled system with centralized generation to a system with less controllable fluctuating and distributed energy supply, with electricity as the main carrier of the generated energy. The challenge is to create an energy system that is open to diverse emerging and future technologies and organizational forms is fundamental. A key conceptual step here is digitization. Digitization allows us to separately consider technologies that make up the energy system, the organizations and citizens that make use of the services of the energy system and the mechanisms that govern their interactions. This is a significant step away from the current system, where these elements are highly dependent and determined by the constraints of the initial system configuration. Simply put, the transition to variable renewable energy sources poses new challenges and requirements for the organization and control of the energy system, but also offers a great opportunity to build a novel energy system. The Digital Energy Framework is inspired by concepts like energy cells, energy conversion hubs, energy packets, virtualization, and energy communities (described below), and will allow trading, management, control, and organization of physical components by interactions within a digital variant of the energy system, which is flexible as most of its functions are software-defined. Scientific concepts for the intelligent hardware required for the integration of energy generation, storage, conversion, and transportation into digital energy concepts (inspired by energy cells and energy conversion hubs, among others) are developed. focuses on designing and analysing the intelligent hardware that enables and facilitates the physical formation of digital energy concepts (energy cells, energy conversion hubs, virtualization, energy communities) and integrate them in the existing power system. Furthermore, this intelligent hardware enables the intelligent algorithms to control and coordinate the energy system and achieve the desired techno-economical, legal and social objectives. For the interconnected digital energy technologies and infrastructure (energy cells, energy conversion hubs, etc.) to achieve sustainability, modularity and intelligence, novel concepts for the generation, conversion, storage and transportation of renewable energy are required. Within the energy cells and energy conversion hubs, it is anticipated that solar energy, electrochemical conversions, power electronic converters, various forms of energy storage and dc links will play pivotal roles in achieving the desired objectives.