IEEE Power Electronics Magazine Compendium - March 2018 - 6

as well as IEEE Power Electronics
Letters and IEEE Power Electronics
Magazine. Today, PELS is a global organization with more than 8,000 members worldwide.
Several articles have been selected
from previous editions of the magazine
to reflect the broad scope of our Society relating to many aspects of today's
technological advances. The articles
are grouped into the following sections: transportation, wireless power,
smart grid, and consumer electronics.
Each article is briefly introduced with
its abstract. However, we are quick to
point to other major advances not directly represented in the issue, both
past and present, that represent the
breadth of the power electronics field
in the 21st century. These advances are
occurring in such areas as silicon and
wide-bandgap semiconductor devices,
advanced control systems, modeling
and simulation, hardware-in-the-loop
analysis, cybersecurity (see the September 2017 issue), design automation, and
electronic packaging and integration.
As we progress into the next decade, power electronics will continue
to penetrate the electric power grid,
transportation, data centers, health
care, and consumer applications. Ever-increasing levels of integration will
open up new system architectures not
previously deemed possible. This includes energy harvesting, more prevalent wearable electronics, such as in
clothing, improvements in electronicassisted prosthetics, and drone delivery systems at significant scale all
due to power density improvements
that miniaturize kilowatts of power.
Ultimately, these advances lead our
general society to a greater use of
energy, perhaps in ways we have not
even imagined yet. Equally important
is that these advances will help to empower the billions of energy-impoverished people in this world.

Transportation
"Electric Motors in Electrified Transportation: A Step Toward Achieving a
Sustainable and Highly Efficient Transportation System" (originally published
in the June 2014 edition): The transpor-

IEEE PowEr ElEctronIcs MagazInE

tation sector is one of the largest energy users, and the main source of energy in our transportation system is still
fossil fuels. As an example, in the
United States, more than 25% of all
energy usage is consumed in the
transportation sector, and 98% of
transportation energy comes from oil,
but most of it is wasted due to the low
efficiency of conventional internal
combustion engine vehicles. Today's
low fuel efficiencies make the automotive industry one of largest sources
of greenhouse gas emissions.

FIG 2 Prof. John G. Kassakian, the
founding president of PELS.

battery pack. Electro Standards Laboratories fabricated the passive and
active parallel lithium-capacitor (LiC)
unit used to smooth the grid-side
power. The power pulsation reduction
was 81% on the grid by the LiC, and
84% on the vehicle for both the LiC
and the carbon ultracapacitors.
"Inductive Power Transfer for
Electric Vehicle Charging: Technical
Challenges and Tradeoffs" (originally
published in the September 2016 edition): Inductive power transfer (IPT)
is widely considered as an alternative
to conventional conductive EV battery
chargers for the unique advantages of
the contactless power supply. In this
article, the power electronics design
tradeoffs between the automotive
requirements of high efficiency, high
compactness, and low cost are analyzed for IPT systems. Pareto fronts
show that physical limits severely restrict a compact and cost-effective design of the IPT coils. The challenge of
realizing a competitive contactless solution is emphasized by a comparison
of existing IPT systems to state-ofthe-art conductive chargers. An overview of today's technology barriers is
provided, and the future perspectives
for IPT are critically discussed.

Wireless Power
"Demonstrating Dynamic Wireless
Charging of an Electric Vehicle: The
Benefit of Electrochemical Capacitor
Smoothing" (originally published in
the March 2014 edition): The wireless
charging of an electric vehicle (EV)
while it is in motion presents challenges in terms of low-latency communications for roadway coil excitation
sequencing and maintenance of lateral
alignment, plus the need for powerflow smoothing. This article summarizes the experimental results on
power smoothing of in-motion wireless EV charging performed at the Oak
Ridge National Laboratory using various combinations of electrochemical
capacitors at the grid side and in the
vehicle. Electrochemical capacitors of
the symmetric carbon-carbon type
from Maxwell Technologies comprised the in-vehicle smoothing of
wireless charging current to the EV

Smart Grid
"Virtual Synchronous Machines: A Unified Interface for Grid Integration"
(originally published in the December
2016 edition): Power systems are going
through a paradigm change from centralized generation to distributed generation and further on to smart grids.
More and more renewable-energy
sources, EVs, energy storage systems,
and so forth are being connected to
power systems through power electronic converters. Moreover, the majority of
loads are expected to connect to the
grid through power electronic converters as well. This article shows that
these converters, either on the supply
side or on the load side, can all be controlled to behave like virtual synchronous machines and possess the dynamics of synchronous machines, providing
a unified interface for smart grid integration. Synchroconverter technology

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Power Electronics Magazine Compendium - March 2018