IEEE East Tennessee PES/PELS Joint Chapter

Writing a strong and effective IEEE paper is an essential skill for students, researchers, and professionals who aim to communicate their work with clarity, rigor, and impact. This talk will guide participants through the key elements of successful IEEE-style writing. Dr. Leon Tolbert, Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the University of Tennessee, brings decades of experience in publishing, reviewing, and mentoring students through the IEEE publication process. Drawing from real-world examples and insights from his extensive work in power electronics and professional IEEE involvement, Dr. Tolbert will share practical strategies to help attendees strengthen their research papers and improve their chances of successful dissemination. Whether you are preparing your first conference paper or aiming to refine your journal submissions, this session will offer actionable guidance suitable for all levels.

Abstract: The revolution in Artificial Intelligence is finally beginning to influence the power electronics and renewable energy fields.  This talk will discuss its particular impact on areas like: power processing, power converter design, renewable energy operation, microgrids and other emerging application areas.  For example: 1) smart PV panels have been built that can self-heal or reconfigure to produce higher power output when shaded or faulted; 2) Weather forecasts that utilize Deep Learning can be incorporated into energy management schedulers for solar photovoltaic microgrids to optimize profits; 3) Power electronic converter design algorithms may become automated in the future using machine learning approaches.  However, the computational processing also requires huge demands on the power supply, especially when multiple GPUs are used.  All these trends from AI have led to new technologies, problem statements, and control problems for the power electronics industry.  These difficulties and opportunities will be discussed.   For registrations, please click here.

This presentation will describe a power electronics based hardware testbed that can emulate an electric grid’s generation, loads, storage, and transmission network and perform several real-time scenarios while incorporating real measurement, control, communication, estimation, and actuation in the system.  The system can be used to represent faults, future grids with high levels of renewable penetration, and a multi-terminal HVDC overlay.  The testbed has been used to represent a future North American grid model that has high penetration levels of renewables (>80%) and also for representing a distribution-level microgrid that has a flexible boundary and multiple points of grid connection.  The tool has been useful in developing control, protection, and measurements needed for the future electric grid. Also, a brief introduction will be provided about the NSF/DOE Engineering Research Center headquartered at The University of Tennessee called CURENT (Center for Ultrawide-area Resilient Electric Energy Transmission Network).  The goals of CURENT are to develop controls and technology that enable the integration of a high penetration level of renewables into the electric transmission network and to enable wide area monitoring, control, and actuation of the U.S. electric grid. PDH credits will be provided for the registered participants who pay USD 5 or more when registering.   For registrations, please click here.