Keynote Speaker I

Prof. Dr. Osama Mohammed, College of Engineering and Computing, Florida International University, USA
Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors, IEEE Fellow, ACES Fellow

Dr. Osama Mohammed is a distinguished professor and the director of the energy systems research laboratory. He was Associate Dean for Research and Graduate Studies, 2016-2023. 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 Veinotte Electromechanical Energy Conversion Award from the IEEE Power and Energy Society 2010. Professor Mohammed has published nearly 900 journals 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 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.

Speech Title: Energy Cyber-Physical Systems and their Communication and Control Challenges for Operational Security in Industrial Systems

The development of innovative cybersecurity technologies, tools, and methodologies that advance the energy system’s ability to survive cyber-attacks and incidents while sustaining critical functions is needed for the secure operation of utility and industrial systems. It is essential to verify and validate the ability of the developed solutions and methodologies so that they can be effectively used in practice. Developing solutions to mitigate cyber vulnerabilities throughout the energy delivery system is essential to protect hardware assets. It will also make systems less susceptible to cyber threats and provide reliable delivery of electricity if a cyber incident occurs.
This talk will describe how the developed solution can protect the power grid and industrial infrastructure from cyber-attacks and build cybersecurity protection into emerging power grid components and services. This includes microgrid and demand-side management components and protecting the network (substations and productivity lines) and data infrastructure (SCADA) to increase the resilience of the energy delivery systems against cyber-attacks. These developments will also help utility security systems manage large amounts of cybersecurity risk data and cybersecurity operations. For these developments to succeed, cybersecurity testbeds and testing methodologies are necessary to evaluate the effectiveness of any proposed security technologies.
The focus on developing cybersecurity capabilities in energy systems should span over multiple strategies: in the near term, midterm, and long term. Continuous security state monitoring across cyber-physical domains is the goal in the near term. The development of continually defending interoperable components that continue operating in degraded conditions is required in the midterm. Developing methodologies to mitigate cyber incidents to return to normal operations quickly is necessary for all system components in the long term. We will discuss R&D efforts in these areas centered on developing operational frameworks related to communication and interoperability, control, and protection.
The importance of interoperability between smart grid applications and multi-vendor devices must be considered. The current grid comprises multi-vendor devices and multi-lingual applications that add to the complexity of integrating and securing the smart grid components. Standards development entities have been working with utilities, vendors, and regulatory bodies to develop standards that address smart grid interoperability. These include IEEE, IEC, NIST, ANSI, NERC, and others. In this presentation, we will conceptualize a comprehensive cyber-physical platform that involves the communication and power network sides integrating the cyber information flow, physical information flow, and the interaction between them. A data-centric communication middleware provides a common-data bus to orchestrate the system’s components, leading to an expandable multi-lingual system. We will present a hardware protocol gateway that was developed as a protocol translator capable of mapping IEC 61850 generic object-oriented substation event (GOOSE) and sampled measured value (SMV) messages into the data-centric Data Distribution Service (DDS) global data bus. This is necessary for integrating the widely used IEC 61850-based devices into an exhaustive microgrid control and security framework.
We will also discuss a scalable cloud-based Multi-Agent System for controlling large-scale penetration of Electric Vehicles (EVs) and their infrastructure into the power grid. This is a system that can survive cyber-attacks while sustaining critical functions. This framework’s network will be assessed by applying contingencies and identifying the resulting signatures for detection in real-time operation. As a result, protective measures can be taken to address the dynamic threats in the foreseen grid-integrated EV parks where the developed system will have an automated response to a cyber-attack.
In distributed energy management systems, the protection system must be adaptive. Communication networks assist in reacting to dynamic changes in the microgrid configurations. This presentation will also describe a newly developed protection scheme with extensive communication provided by the IEC 61850 standard for power networks to monitor the microgrid during these dynamic changes. The robustness and availability of the communication infrastructure are required for the success of protection measures. This adaptive protection scheme for AC microgrids can survive communication failures through energy storage systems.

Keynote Speaker II

Prof. Elisabetta Tedeschi, Dept. of Electric Energy, Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) & Dept. of Industrial Engineering, University of Trento, Italy

Dr. Elisabetta Tedeschi joined the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) as faculty member in 2013, and she is currently Professor within offshore grid at the Department of Electric Energy. Since 2020, she is also Professor in Power Converters, Electrical Machines and Drives at the Department of Industrial Engineering of the University of Trento in Italy.
Having received a Marie Curie Fellowship, from 2011 to 2013 she was an Experienced Researcher at Tecnalia in Spain. Subsequently she had a part time position as Research Scientist at Sintef Energy Research, in Norway, between 2013 and 2014. In 2015, she was granted funding under the “Young Research Talent” scheme of the Research Council of Norway for an international project on Integrated Design and Control of Offshore HVDC networks. She has led and/or contributed to more than 15 national and international scientific projects and co-authored more than 150 journal and conference papers.
She was Technical Programme Co-chair of the 13th Annual Energy Conversion Congress and Exposition (ECCE) 2021 and Programme Chair of the 17th IEEE Workshop on Control and Modeling for Power Electronics, (COMPEL) 2016, Member of the Technical Programme Committee of the IEEE ISGT 2024, IEEE SMART 2022, IEEE CPE 2021, IEEE SPEC/COBEP 2019, IEEE COMPEL 2018, and of the IEEE EVER-Monaco Conferences between 2012 and 2021. Her research interests include design and control of energy conversion systems, offshore transmission and distribution networks and power quality issues.

Speech Title: Leveraging Offshore Grids to Win the Decarbonization Challenge

In a period of global uncertainty, characterized by political and economic strains, the energy debate will remain of crucial importance if we aim to steer the world towards more sustainable generation and consumption patterns. While it seems increasingly challenging and expensive to hit the target set by the Paris agreement of keeping the global temperature rise this century well below 2o (preferably 1.5o) above pre-industrial levels, the goal of this talk is to unveil the key role that offshore energy systems can have in the much-needed energy shift.
To promote a less-polluted and more-electrified world, electric generation, transmission, and consumption need to be significantly re-thought and offshore assets will become pivotal resources, not just for the growing relevance of ocean renewables, but also because traditionally energy-intensive offshore activities are embracing more sustainable energy paradigms.
The deployment of a trans-national “Super Grid” will require the interconnection to the onshore power system of large amounts of offshore renewables, loads and storage systems, demanding new strategies for their optimal design, control and coordination.
This talk will present the status, challenges and opportunities faced by offshore networks. It will pinpoint similarities and differences with respect to land-based networks and highlight the pivotal role of power electronics, storage technologies and digitalization in enabling offshore isolated or grid-connected energy systems to provide support to human activities, while enduring and harnessing the resources of such harsh environment. Finally, it will discuss how lessons learned from offshore energy systems can be usefully exported to other contexts.

Keynote Speaker III

Prof. Ioannis Lestas, University of Cambridge, United Kingdom

Bio: Ioannis Lestas is a Professor of Control Engineering at the Department of Engineering, University of Cambridge. He received the B.A. (Starred First) and M.Eng. (Distinction) degrees in Electrical and Information Sciences and the Ph.D. in control engineering from the University of Cambridge (Trinity College) in 2002 and 2007, respectively. His doctoral work was performed as a Gates Scholar. He has been a Junior Research Fellow of Clare College, University of Cambridge and he was awarded a five year Royal Academy of Engineering research fellowship. He is also the recipient of a five year ERC starting grant, and an ERC proof of concept grant. He is currently serving as Associate Editor for the IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control, the IEEE Transactions on Smart Grid, and as a Senior Editor for the IEEE Transactions on Control of Network Systems. His research interests include decentralized control and optimization in power systems and smart grids.

Speech Title: Grid codes and Control Design in Renewable Based Power Grids

Renewable dominated power systems are characterized by a low inertia, with the interactions between the control policies of the converters raising concerns about system stability and reliable operation. The highly distributed generation and the need to incorporate grid-forming control schemes requires the refinement of existing grid codes such that appropriate constraints and design protocols are imposed on the control policies. In the presentation it will be discussed how appropriately formulated impedance based, frequency domain, conditions can be used as a basis for designing grid-forming control policies while ensuring system stability. Various results and future directions will be discussed, as well as extensions to hybrid AC/DC networks and interlinking converters in AC multi-grids.

Keynote Speaker IV

Prof. Phillip Kollmeyer, McMaster University, Canada

Bio: Phillip Kollmeyer received the B.S.(2006), M.S.(2011), and Ph.D.(2015) degrees in electrical engineering from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. In July of 2023 he started as an assistant professor at McMaster University, where he was a Senior Principal Research Engineer from 2019 to 2023 and a Postdoctoral Research Associate from 2016 to 2019. His research is focused (1) in the battery area – with topics including state estimation, modeling, aging, ultra-fast charging, and thermal management – and (2) on optimizing electric drivetrain efficiency via multi-speed gearboxes, wide bandgap power electronics, and power split control algorithms. He leads the battery testing facilities at McMaster University, which include 104 cell testing channels, 52 climatic chambers, and module and pack testing up to 800 V and 160 kW. Phil has authored and coauthored more than 80 publications, had a supervisory role for more than a dozen graduate students, and created numerous widely utilized open-source battery datasets and algorithms. From 2018 to 2023, Phil served on the senior organizing committee of the IEEE Transportation Electrification Conference (ITEC) and he was General Chair of the conference in 2023.

Speech Title: Maximizing Battery Performance through Smart Controls and Machine Learning

Grid tied battery energy storage has grown rapidly over the last five years, from around 1 GW installed capacity in the US at the utility scale in 2020 to over 30 GW today, and is expected to double in the next two years. This growth is driven by battery energy storage’s competitiveness with natural gas peaker plants and the need to balance renewable energy generation with power demand. Coordinated control of home energy storage systems and electric vehicle charging are arising as important supplements to the grid as well. This presentation will give insight into how smart control and machine learning can enable operators to get the most out of grid tied battery systems. Specifically, battery control based on incremental degradation cost and thermal constraints, as well as machine learning based algorithms to accurately estimate how much energy can be absorbed or supplied, will be shown. These approaches, which were originally developed for automotive applications, can help maximize supplied energy, profitability, and lifetime, enabling battery’s role in the grid continue to grow at a rapid pace.

Keynote Speaker V

Prof. Mohammadreza Aghaei, University of Freiburg, Germany

Bio: Mohammadreza Aghaei received a Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from Politecnico di Milano, Italy in 2016. He joined Fraunhofer ISE as visiting scholar in 2015. He was a Postdoctoral Scientist at Fraunhofer ISE and Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin (HZB)-PVcomB, Germany, in 2017 and 2018, respectively. He has been joined to the Solar Energy Engineering program at the University of Freiburg, as a Guest Lecturer in 2017. Later, he also fulfilled another two years postdoc in the Design of Sustainable Energy Systems Group at Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e), in the Netherlands. He was also appointed as an Adjunct Professor at Amirkabir University of Technology (AUT) in 2020. He was involved in several national and EU-funded research projects dealing with energy systems, energy flexibility, solar photovoltaics, and smart/autonomous technology. Currently, he is the coordinator/leader of EU projects at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) in Norway. He is also a full professor in the Department of Sustainable Systems Engineering (INATECH), Solar Energy Engineering program at the University of Freiburg, Germany. He is also an IEEE senior member, and he authored over 190 publications in internationally refereed journals, books, book chapters, and conference proceedings.

Speech Title: From Sunlight to Sustainability: The Prospects of Solar photovoltaics for Energy Transition

Solar photovoltaics (PV) is the foremost renewable energy technology for cost-optimised climate-change mitigation and smooth energy transition to provide clean and affordable energy. However, achieving this scale of deployment poses significant challenges, considering the resource constraints, technological limitations, integration into existing energy systems and grids, and ensuring their reliability, security and flexibility. Meeting the ambitious SDG 7 of a climate-neutral economy requires massive PV installations, ranging from 20 to 80 TWp, by 2050, and further expanding from 80 to 170 TWp by 2100 in progressive global energy scenarios. Despite the remarkable milestone of more than 1 TWp of global installed PV capacity having been reached in 2022, and continual cost reductions over time, PV still remains only a small fraction of global electricity generation, contributing only 4%–5% in 2022. However, accelerated PV deployment, coupled with deep electrification, has the potential to deliver significant CO₂ emission reductions, amounting to approximately 21% or nearly 4.9 Gt annually by 2050. This further emphasises the importance of pushing the boundaries of PV technology and implementation. Ensuring a smooth transition and managing this demand surge requires strategic planning and coordinated effort. These escalating statistics clearly illustrate the requirement for a marked surge in PV installations with gigawatt-power capacity and vast amounts of electricity generated in terawatt hours (TWh).
During this talk, we will explore the potential of PV technologies in tackling the challenges associated with Energy Transition. Moreover, we will delve into the innovative applications of solar PV energy, focusing on how it can ensure access to affordable, reliable, and sustainable energy for humanity.