Seminar 11: Power electronics for grid connected applications

Abstract: As the need to reduce climate change drives shift toward more environmental-friendly energy production, the challenge is how to integrate higher amounts of non-controllable renewable sources in transmission and distribution grids without compromising on reliability, stability and cost of the service to the consumers. In the last 60 years, ABB has continuously developed concepts and broadened the number of grid-connected applications through high-voltage, high-power electronic converter technologies to connect generation and storage to the grid, or to compensate active and reactive power fluctuations. Grid connected converter technologies have had a truly revolutionary impact on the way that electrical energy is delivered to consumers all over the world, and is an indispensable part of the today and future power grid systems.  This presentation will give an overview of the historical developments of power electronics in grid-connected applications, including both HVDC and FACTS technologies; secondly, the key design parameters of power electronics and functionalities will be described in the context of megatrend and grand challenges of power system evolution; further, the current state of the art and topics for future research will be discussed.

Bio: Alireza Nami (S’07–M’10–SM’16) received his Ph.D. in Power Electronics from Queensland University of Technology, Australia, in 2010. From 2010 to 2011, he was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Global Center of Excellence, Kumamoto University, Japan. Since 2011, he has been with ABB Corporate Research Sweden initially as a Scientist and later as a Senior Scientist, a Principal Scientist, and an R&D Project leader, in the research field of power converter design and control for various applications especially high voltage and high power applications such as HVDC and FACTS, system integration technology for renewable energy sources, etc. Currently, he is R&D team manager and leading a power electronics team at ABB Corporate Research Centre, Vasteras, Sweden including extensive laboratory facilities for multi-megawatt testing capabilities enabling cutting edge research in the areas of grid connected power electronics. Dr. Nami has served several leading power electronics conferences as an invited speaker and a technical chair. He is author/co-author of number of conference and journal publications. He is inventor/co-inventor of several patent applications which have been adopted by the industry. He is an Associate Editor of the IEEE Transaction on Power Electronics, a member of Cigre working group, and a member of the International Scientific Committee of EPE.