Guest Speaker: Marco Liserre, Professor and Chair of Power Electronics, University of Kiel, Germany

Host: Professor Matthias Preindl

Presented by the Department of Electrical Engineering, Columbia Engineering, and the Sense, Collect, and Move Data Center at the Data Science Institute

This is a hybrid event. Attendees can attend in person at Columbia’s Northwest Corner Building, 14th Floor, or on Zoom. Please see your Eventbrite confirmation email for the Zoom link.

Power Electronics for Smart Energy Management: from Smart Transformer to 100 % Electronic Grid by Means of Grid-Forming and Talkative Power Conversion Technologies

Abstract: The goal to decarbonize energy production and use especially in the transportation sector is challenging the modern power system. Power electronics is now playing a different role with respect to 20 years ago, taking direct responsibility for the electric grid, eventually evolving towards an electronic grid. Power converters will play a grid-forming role being not only in charge of adjusting voltage levels and creating different AC and DC supplies but also controlling generation, loads, and power flow among them. The Smart Transformer, which is a fundamental node of the future electronic grid, is now in the process of being standardized for IEEE and CIGRE initiatives. On the other hand, the energy management functionality of power-electronic-based devices as the Smart Transformer needs communication to get information from sensors send commands to actuators, and better manage the future dynamical reconfigurable meshed and hybrid grid and its protection. Power electronics can also provide communication functionalities embedding data directly in the Pulse Width Modulation also thanks to Wide Band Gap devices which allows higher switching frequency still with limited losses. This will open a new era for networked systems experiencing hyper-connectivity at different levels but still using the same device, the power electronics converter, where the conversion architecture and the Pulse Width Modulation are now re-thinking in a new and exciting perspective bridging two different realms of knowledge: power conversion and communication.

Bio: Marco Liserre (S’00-M’02-SM’07-F’13) obtained the MSc and PhD degrees in Electrical Engineering from the Politecnico di Bari in 1998 and 2002 respectively. He has been an Associate Professor at the Politecnico di Bari and, since 2012, a Professor of Reliable Power Electronics at Aalborg University (Denmark). Since 2013 he has been Full Professor and holds the Chair of Power Electronics at the University of Kiel (Germany). He has been offered and declined professorships at several universities. He has published more than 700 technical papers (1/3 of them in international refereed journals), one book, and 5 granted patents. These works have received more than 50,000 citations. Marco Liserre is listed in the 2014 ISI Thomson report “The World’s most influential scientific minds”. Several of his students (MSc, PhD, and post-docs) are in leading positions in industry and universities worldwide. In 2023, he joined the Fraunhofer ISIT on a part-time basis as deputy director and director of the new division “Electronic Energy Systems”, as well as the Kiel branch of the Fraunhofer ISIT.

He is a member of IAS, PELS, PES, and IES. He has served all these societies in various capacities. In PELS, he is Co-Editor of the IEEE Open Access Journal in Power Electronics and Technical Committee Chairman of the Committee on Electronic Power Grid Systems. He has co-chaired several IEEE conferences. He has received 15 awards from IEEE, PCIM, and EPE-PEMC, including the prestigious 2018 IEEE-IES Mittelmann Achievement Award and the 2023 IEEE-PELS R. David Middlebrook Achievement Award. In 2023, he was awarded the title of “Ufficiale” by the President of the Italian Republic.

Time: 2:00-3:00 pm EDT

Free!

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