The Power system infrastructure represents the backbone of regional and national economic activities. Resilient and secure grid operation is increasingly becoming important because a disruption or loss of function could negatively impact the whole infrastructure and our ability to maintain sustainable development goals.

The multiterminal distributed microgrids infrastructure is the future of new energy systems, implementing increased renewables and energy storage levels to ensure sustainable developments. For real-time control and security, there will be a heavy reliance on digital communication and control, and the deep integration of information and physics. The latter makes the system vulnerable to cyberattacks. In communication networks, the packets of information are sent around the network and assembled at the destination. Delays and errors in time, either due to communication or cyberattacks, can lead to errors in power and energy control and management, which may result in outages and increased levels of instability.

Innovative techniques that can offer appropriate real-time or faster-than-real-time decisions are needed to maintain resilient and reliable operations in addition to cyber-physical security. In this talk, we will discuss the implementation of the Digital Twins (DT) technology to deal with these complex and critical challenges. The DT is an integrated solution that can cover every asset and component. The digital twin model is continuously updated and synchronized from sources and provides near real-time status updates, working conditions, and operational challenges in the field. With advanced analytics such as machine learning and artificial intelligence, the DT provides simulation capabilities to predict, optimize, and estimate future states. This strategic solution can be a fully integrated situational-awareness platform for the system operator based on the digital twin shadow and the machine learning insights for physical faults and cyber threat events. The DT will introduce a virtual replica of the system for state estimation and prediction, as well as the appropriate operation scenario after detecting such events to guarantee continued operation. We can then select the candidate optimal scenario of operation in real-time or even faster-than-real-time if high-performance computing is used, based on the what-if scenarios capability of the digital twin and contingency analysis. 

Professor Osama Mohammed is a Distinguished Electrical and Computer Engineering Professor and the director of the Energy Systems Research Laboratory with its Smart Grid Testbed Facility.

Professor Mohammed is a Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors, a Fellow of IEEE, and a Fellow of the Applied Computational Electromagnetic Society. He received the Prestigious Cyril Veinott Electromechanical Energy Conversion Award from the IEEE Power and Energy Society in 2010. Professor Mohammed has published nearly 900 journal and refereed conference articles. He holds more than 20 patents in his research areas. He has also published a book and several book chapters.

His research interests include renewable energy utilization, power systems, smart grids, and wide-area network applications. He is also interested in Electric machines and Drives, Fault-tolerant designs, diagnostics, and intelligent systems applications. He is interested in transportation electrification, shipboard power systems, and Lunar Habitat energy infrastructure. He is also interested in power electronics for integrated motor drives and DC distribution systems for renewable energy. He also has an interest in computational electromagnetics. Dr. Mohammed has successfully obtained many research contracts and grants from industries and Federal government agencies and has current active research programs in several areas.

He has been the general chair and Technical Program Chair of more than 12 major IEEE international conferences, including IEEE/ISAP, IEEE/IEMDC, IEEE/CEFC, and COMPUMAG. He has been an editor of IEEE Transactions on Energy Conversion, IEEE Transactions on Smart Grid, IEEE Transactions on Magnetics, and IEEE Transactions on Industry Applications.

Jose Rodriguez (M'81-SM'94-F'10-LF'20) received the Engineer degree in electrical engineering from the Universidad Tecnica Federico Santa Maria, in Valparaiso, Chile and the Dr.-Ing. degree in electrical engineering from the University of Erlangen, Erlangen, Germany. He has been professor sand President of Universidad Tecnica Federico Santa Maria, Universidad Andres Bello and Universidad San Sebastian, all in Chile. Now, he is Director of the Center for Energy Transition at the University of San Sebastian in Santiago de Chile. He has coauthored two books, several book chapters and more than 1000 journals and conference papers. His main research interests include multilevel inverters, new converter topologies, control of power converters, and adjustable-speed drives. He has received several best paper awards from journals of the IEEE. Dr. Rodriguez is member of the Chilean Academy of Engineering. In 2014 he received the National Award of Applied Sciences and Technology from the government of Chile. In 2015 he received the Eugene Mittelmann Award from the Industrial Electronics Society of the IEEE. In years 2014 to 2024 he has been included in the list of Highly Cited Researchers published by Web of Science.

Abstract:

Model Predictive Control (MPC) emerged years ago as an attractive control strategy for power electronics systems. Main advantages of MPC are the simple concept, the capability to include easily different control objectives and the high dynamic performance. On the contrary, like any new strategy, it also has disadvantages such as dependence on the mathematical model, dependence on the parameters and a variable frequency spectrum. However, thanks to the work carried out by the scientific community, most of these disadvantages have been resolved. This talk aims to introduce the audience to MPC and show them its evolution and applications. Special attention will be given to use of MPC in multilevel inverters using few calculations and how to avoid the use of weighting factors. The presentation will also present the evaluation to be used in electric vehicles. Finally, this talk will discuss the challenges that MPC must overcome to be adopted by the industry.

Sanjib Kumar Panda (S’86-M’91-SM’01-F’2021) received B. Eng. Degree from the South Gujarat University, India, in 1983, M.Tech. degree from the Indian Institute of Technology, Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi, India, in 1987, and the Ph.D. degree from the University of Cambridge, U.K., in 1991, all in electrical engineering. He was the recipient of the Cambridge-Nehru Scholarship and M. T. Mayer Graduate Scholarship during his PhD study (1987-1991). Since 1992, he has been holding a faculty position in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, National University of Singapore and currently serving as an Associate Professor and Director of the Power & Energy Research Area. Dr. Panda has published more than 450 peer-reviewed research papers, co-authored one book and contributed to several book chapters, holds six patents and co-founder of three start-up companies. His research interests include high-performance control of motor drives and power electronic converters, condition monitoring and predictive maintenance, building energy efficiency enhancement etc. He is serving as an Associate Editor of several IEEE Transactions e.g. Power Electronics, Industry Applications, Energy Conversion, Access and IEEE Journal of Emerging and Selected Topics in Power Electronics. He is the Chair of the IEEE PELS Technical Committee -12 (TC-12): Energy Access and Off-grid Systems.

Abstract:

Medium-voltage (MV) grid-connected solid-state-transformer (SST) based fast-charging (FC) stations provide several merits in terms of improved efficiency, power density, current limiting capability, etc. However, the propositions in literature are either not bidirectional (to simultaneously support V2G and G2V) or are unable to interface multiple types of plug-in electric-vehicles (PEVs), which are not able to meet the expectations of future fast-charging infrastructures. The fast-charging solutions available commercially are mostly for interfacing with the low voltage grid, and are unable to connect multiple type of PEVs. In this lecture, a futuristic MV grid-connected public multi-port FC/dC station is presented which not only resembles a conventional vehicle refuelling station’s functionality by simultaneously interfacing all three types of PEV categories (heavy or hPEVs, medium or mPEVs and light or lPEVs), but also facilitates bidirectional power flow for V2G applications. The modulation, operation and control schemes of the front-end (FE) MVAC-LVDC single-stage conversion and back-end (BE) DC-DC conversion of the proposed architecture are presented in details. Real-time digital-simulator (RTDS) based Hardware-in-loop (HIL) test results for full-scale 22 kV, 1 MVA architecture’s bidirectional operation verifies the proposed operation and controller for full-scale operation. The architecture facilitates simultaneous FC/dC of 1 hPEV within 49.5 min, 2 mPEVs within 28 min and 4 lPEVs within 16 min, while adhering closely to the prescribed charging/discharging schedules of each PEV. Finally, a proportionally scaled down 1 kV, 13.2 kVA experimental verification validates the architecture’s performance during drastic net power flow change conditions and exhibits a peak efficiency of 96.4% with a power density of 3.2 kVA/L. A comprehensive benchmarking of the proposed architecture with commercially available FC products is also presented.