IEEE Power Electronics Magazine - December 2020 - 47

noted the keynoter. Throughout the history of interconnected
system operations, the System Operator-the Defender of the
Grid-has always been there to act on behalf of the users of
the electric grid-our customers and communities. So how
do we bridge between what we have now, what we will have
in 5 years, and what we will have 20 years from now. At the
end of the day, our customers expect for the lights (or whatever lights turn into 50 years from now) to stay on. That metaphor-keeping the lights on 24X7X365, continues to be the
mission of the System Operator. In conclusion, Holeman said
that the real motivation to keep the environment clean was
his grandchildren. In fact, he wants to keep the environment
clean for all the children of the world.

More Technical Presentations
In all there were 959 papers accepted by ECCE 2020, which
grouped into 62 video-on-demand Oral Sessions and 36 digital poster sessions. Plus, the virtual conference featured 20
live or simulive special sessions. The special sessions were
strongly oriented towards the latest industrial interests and
technology trends, as well as the latest collaboration opportunities between industry and academia. Additionally, there
are two free special memorial sessions dedicated to Prof.
Tom Lipo who passed away in 2020. There are two types of
special sessions: 1) panel discussions which are live panel
sessions without formal presentations and 2) simulive videos
broadcast in real time followed by a live discussions and
Q&A. Furthermore, ECCE 2020 Women in Engineering
(WIE) committee organized a special session featuring
" Dealing with Public Health Emergence: Online Life and
Advanced Technologies in Re---mote Education. " (see IEEE
Power Electronics Magazine, December 2020, page 48).
There were also a number of student activities. The tradition
of student project demonstration was continued in ECCE
2020. Consequently, some 20 projects were showcased in the
virtual platform.
The special session " Recent Successes in Accelerating
the Adoption of Wide Bandgap Power Electronics " was
organized by Victor Veliadis and Jim LeMunyon of Power-
America. In accelerating the adoption of WBG semiconductors, the focus was on increasing the number of applications for both silicon carbide (SiC) and gallium nitride
(GaN) technologies that are most likely to deliver near term
improvements in systems that can benefit from higher efficiency, reliability, and total cost of ownership. This session
addressed challenges and recent successes in several key
applications for SiC and GaN that have been identified by
PowerAmerica's members in the PowerAmerica Technology Roadmap. Speakers and presentations were as follows:
■■ " Wide-Band-Gap Power Semiconductor Devices for Automotive Applications " by Chingchi Chen, Ford Research
and Engineering
■■ " Solid-State Circuit Breakers-a Uniform Platform for
Power Distribution " by Ryan Kennedy, Atom Power
■■ " Challenges in Testing SiC Devices " by Joshua MacFie,
GROUPNire

Prof. Deepak Divan, director of the Center for Distributed
Energy at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta,
GA, and Prof. Jelena Popovic´ of the University of Twente,
The Netherlands moderated the special session on " Energy
Access: Technologies, Impact and The Opportunity for
PELS. " The focus was on bringing electricity to remote and
rural areas where they don't have access to a centralized grid.
Decentralized approaches, such as solar home systems and
microgrids, have emerged as a response to shortcomings
of the centralized grid approach, but affordability, scalability, interoperability and societal and technical sustainability
remain a challenge. Last year, IEEE PELS organized a global
challenge " Empower a Billion Lives (EBL), " and included
" Energy Access " as a new and core topic in its long-range
planning. Following on the success of the first EBL round,
a strong expression of interest in the technologies underlying energy access, and a burgeoning need for decentralized
power systems with more autonomous control, Technical
Committee (TC) 12: Energy Access was formed by PELS to
provide global technical leadership in this important area.
The panelists discussed key technology gaps in the
broader field of energy access, and identified possible
solutions that could have great impact in the communities
that need them. This discussion was also aimed at helping
TC-12 in defining areas of activity, including EBL. Technical challenges and opportunities in decentralized systems
for energy access and necessity of context-appropriate,
impact-driven approach. The topics included off-grid solar
opportunities and challenges, social impact, localization and
scaling, nanogrids: challenges of serving base-of-pyramid,
interconnected solar home systems, peer-to-peer energy
sharing, and capacity building. While raising enthusiasm
within the PELS community, it stimulated the involvement in
TC-12 activities and energy access as a topic on the whole.
During the dedicated exhibit hours, ROHM Semiconductor presented its advanced 4G trench gate SiC MOSFET
with faster switching characteristics, lower switching and
conduction losses and short-circuit ruggedness for EVs and
other industrial applications, and MathWorks demonstrated
digital control design of dc-dc converters and motors with
Simulink. Similarly, EGSTON disclosed its COMPISO System Unit 200-1GAMP6 as a turnkey power hardware-in-the
loop solution for electrical power system test benches, and
ON Semiconductor revealed its SiC product portfolio.

About the Author
Ashok Bindra (bindra1@verizon.net) received his M.S.
degree from the Department of Electrical and Computer
Engineering, Clarkson College of Technology (now Clarkson University), Potsdam, New York, USA, and his M.Sc.
degree in physics from the University of Bombay, India. He
is the editor-in-chief of IEEE Power Electronics Magazine
and a Member of the IEEE. He is a veteran freelance writer
and editor with more than 35 years of editorial experience
covering power electronics, analog/radio-frequency technologies, and semiconductors.
December 2020

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IEEE Power Electronics Magazine - December 2020

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