IEEE Power & Energy Magazine - September/October 2020 - 100

awards

PES and IEEE awards
congratulations to the 2020 recipients

T H E I E E E P OW E R & E N E RGY
Society (PES) is proud to announce
the 2020 Society-level award recipients and the recipient of the 2020 IEEE
Medal in Power Engineering. The recipients are selected through a comprehensive nomination and evaluation
process. Please join us in congratulating this year's awardees for their exceptional achievements.

IEEE Award
2020 IEEE Medal in Power
Engineering
The IEEE Medal in Power Engineering was established in 2008. It is presented to an individual for outstanding
contributions to the technology associated with the generation, transmission,
distribution, application, and utilization of electric power for the betterment of society. The award consists
of a gold medal, bronze replica, certificate, and honorarium. The medal is
sponsored by the IEEE Industry Applications Society (IAS), IEEE Industrial
Electronics Sociey, IEEE Power Electronics Society, and PES. The 2020
IEEE Medal in Power Engineering
was awarded to Rik W. De Doncker
with the citation "for contributions to
high-power and energy-conversion
technologies."

Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MPE.2020.3001957
Date of current version: 19 July 2020

100

ieee power & energy magazine

Rik W. De Doncker
Dedicated to realizing a more efficient
and integrated power grid, the groundbrea k i ng power
distribution and conversion concepts of
Rik W. De Doncker
have been integral to advances in
power quality, energy savings, the
use of renewable power sources, and
the development of electric vehicles
(EVs). In 1988, during his postdoctoral work at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, he developed a bidirectional dc-to-dc converter for the
energy supply systems of the NASA
space station. Now known as the dualactive bridge converter, it is one of the
most efficient high-power, isolated dcto-dc converters, and a 7-MW version
was recently tested in a 5-kV multiterminal dc grid.

His patented work on the auxiliary
resonant commutated pole converter
(ARCP) resulted in a high-power, yet
highly efficient, converter capable of
pulsewidth modulation. Multimegawatt
ARCP converters have found use in
uninterruptable power supplies, locomotive applications, and ship propulsion systems. His medium-voltage static
transfer switch, developed in 1993 at
Silicon Power Corporation, was commissioned at more than 25 installations
in the United States that are still operational today, keeping power up during
voltage sags. For this work, he received
the 2008 PES Nari Hingorani Custom
Power Award. His patented EV battery
interface was licensed by General Electric and is used in the majority of golf
carts and hybrid EVs worldwide, providing improved efficiency and a reduction
in hybrid vehicle battery size, weight,
and cost. His concept of modular multimotor propulsion systems and modular smart batteries further improved the
interoperability of EVs with 150-kW dc
fast chargers. This multimotor concept
has also been implemented in the Audi
Q6 e-tron propulsion drive.
As the director of the Institute
for Power Electronics and Electrical
Drives at RWTH Aachen University,
Germany, his current R&D activities
focus on power electronic converters
for, among other things, household
appliances, EV propulsion systems,
switched reluctance drives, dc battery chargers, and high power-density
september/october 2020

IEEE Power & Energy Magazine - September/October 2020

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