IEEE East Tennessee PES/PELS Joint Chapter

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.

This presentation will focus on the various options for DC powering of Data Center equipment that have been deployed around the world.  It will explore the pros and cons of each of these options, and compare them to traditional Data Center AC UPS backup powering.  Energy efficiencies will be discussed as well as costs and availability of DC power supplies for data center end-use equipment.  Electrical safety will also be discussed as it relates to the various DC architectures, as well as the traditional AC architecture.  The session will be open to Q&A. Curtis Ashton is a degreed electrical engineer and a Master Electrician (state of CO) employed as the Training Director by American Power Systems LLC, which is a DC services (battery and DC plant installation and maintenance) company owned by a very large battery manufacturer (lead-acid and Li-ion).  In his career, he was previously employed for 27 years by a large telecom company and data center operator (as a power and grounding expert), and was initially employed by an electric utility (as an electrician’s helper and engineering technician) at a coal-fired generating station.  Curtis has authored numerous published papers, magazine articles, and is the lead author of several IEEE and ANSI/ATIS standards.  He is the immediate past chair of the IEEE PES ESSB (Energy Storage and Stationary Battery) Committee (which is responsible for 38 IEEE standards among other activities it does), and is working group chair, vice-chair or secretary for almost a dozen working groups within IEEE PES ESSB and IEEE-SA SCC 21.  Mr. Ashton also serves as a member of the NFPA 855 committee (energy storage system installation).  He has presented at conferences around the world, and is the technical committee chair for the annual Battcon conference.  In his spare time, he enjoys keeping up his Spanish language fluency, and refereeing high school basketball and soccer. For registrations, please click here.