IEEE Power Electronics Magazine - March 2020 - 12

Happenings

by Qing-Chang Zhong

Power Electronics-Enabled
Operation of Power Systems

ower systems are going
through a paradigm shift as
millions of distributed energy
resources are connected to the grid
worldwide. This imposes unprecedented challenges to the operation of
future power systems, which will be
power electronics based instead of
electric machines with millions of
active, intermittent, nonsynchronous,
and heterogeneous players. It is
important to identify the fundamental
challenges and needs in multidisciplinary research and education in the
control of power electronics-enabled
power systems for enhanced grid stability, autonomy, scalability, operability, reliability, security, and resiliency,
while strengthening collaborative
efforts to tackle these issues and raise
awareness within funding agencies
and among policy makers. To help do
so, the Energy, Power, Control, and
Networks Program of the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) sponsored a workshop, Power Electronics-Enabled Operation of Power Systems, at the Illinois Institute of
Technology (IIT), Chicago, from 31
October to 1 November 2019, under
award 1933207.
The workshop's organizing committee included Prof. Qing-Chang
Zhong (chair), IIT; Prof. Sairaj Dhople,
University of Minnesota; Prof. Brian
Johnson, University of Washington;
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MPEL.2019.2960670
Date of current version: 19 February 2020

IEEE POWER ELECTRONICS MAGAZINE

Prof. Beibei Ren, Texas Tech University; Dr. Thanh Long Vu, Pacific
Nor thwest National Laborator y;
Prof. Ziang Zhang, Binghamton University; and Annette Lauderdale, IIT.
More than 130 participants from
funding agencies, regulatory commissions, utilities, national labs, universities, and vendors attended (Figure 1).
The vice provost for research at IIT,
Prof. Fred J. Hickernell, welcomed
them. Dr. Anil Pahwa from the NSF
kicked off the workshop with "NSF
Perspectives: Challenges and Opportunities," followed by 10 keynotes,
nine short talks, and two panel discussions. The pa r ticipa nts a lso
v i sited the IIT microgrid and the
SYNDEM Smart Grid Lab.
The talks included
■ "Enabling a Power Electronics
Grid," Prof. Deepak Divan, Georgia
Institute of Technology
■ "Power Electronics-Enabled Autonomous Power Systems: Synchro-

■

nized and Democratized (SYNDEM) Smart Grids," Qing-Chang
Zhong, IIT
"Optimizing Ubiquitous Power Electronics for the Future Power Grid,"
Dr. Zhenyu Henry Huang, Pacific
Northwest National Laboratory
"Technical Challenges of High Level
of Inverter-Based Resources in
Power Grids," Prof. Robert Lasseter,
University of Wisconsin-Madison
"Research and Education in CURENT
on Power Electronics for Power
Systems," Prof. Fred Wang, University of Tennessee, Knoxville
"Growing Deployment of Power
Electronics in Power Systems:
Challenges, Opportunities, and
Research Initiatives," Dr. Abraham
Ellis, U.S. Department of Energy
"Flexible Division and Unification
Control Strategies for Resilience
Enhancement in Networked Microgrids," Prof. Mohammad Shahidehpour, IIT

FIG 1 Workshop attendees gather for the first day.

z March 2020

IEEE Power Electronics Magazine - March 2020

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