IEEE Power Electronics Magazine - June 2022 - 69

and lifecycle sustainability. Prof. Chang highlighted PELS flagship
initiatives, such as the IEEE Empower a Billion Lives
(EBL), a recurring global competition aimed at fostering innovation
to develop technically, economically, and socially viable
energy access solutions and IEEE Global Energy Access
Forum, a platform to facilitate multistakeholder engagement
in discussions on how rapid technology developments, forward
leaning policies and new financing mechanisms intersect
and can accelerate the development and deployment of
scalable solutions for energy access.
Dr. Gideon (Don) van Zyl, Technical Fellow at Advanced
Energy Industries, presented the fourth talk on " Driving
Plasma: Advancing Power Conversion in Critical
Semi and Medical Applications. " His talk indicated that
plasma processing is well known in semiconductor wafer
manufacturing and for creating highly engineered coatings
in advanced industrial applications. Plus, he added, " The
ability to precisely power and drive plasma loads has also
enabled electrosurgical applications. " For the power electronics
engineer, Dr. van Zyl said that plasma loads present
unique challenges, including wide swings in load impedance,
the highly nonlinear and time-varying nature of the load, arcing,
and the difficulty in precisely measuring and controlling
power delivery. While highlighting the challenges of power
delivery and control with varying plasma loads, Dr. van Zyl's
talk showed how advances in power electronics devices,
such as SiC and GaN, circuits, and measurement and control
are enabling advanced plasma processing.
Next, Dr. Ritu Sodhi, PSMA Roadmap Committee executive
and a consultant with ROHM Semiconductor's Power
Transistor R&D Group, presented the history of PSMA
Power Technology Roadmap (PTR), starting from 1994 to
the present time. In her talk " History of PSMA Power Technology
Roadmap: from AAA TripTik to Google Maps, " she
walked down memory lane and tracked
the evolution of the PSMA PTR-from a
single, in-person, roundtable event in the
early years to a multidimensional, multimedia,
multiyear activity to track key
trends across a broad variety of power
conversion markets. In her concluding
remarks, Dr. Sodhi said that the power
electronics community should come
together to help PSMA chart the next 30
years of the industry!
The final talk " Inverters for the Future
Grid-Challenges and Opportunities "
was given by Prof. Deepakraj (Deepak)
Divan, John E Pippin chair, GRA eminent
scholar, and director of GT Center
for Distributed Energy, ECE, Georgia
Institute of Technology, GA, USA. In his
presentation, Prof. Divan highlighted the
increasing role of power electronics in
the grid. With the wide spread proliferation
of solar PV, wind and storage in the
Microgrid 2
Microgrid 3
Central Grid Interconnnection
FIG 1 Coordinated control of millions of inverters on the grid is challenging.
June 2022 z IEEE POWER ELECTRONICS MAGAZINE 69
utility eco-system, his talk indicated that over the next five to
ten years, millions of geo-dispersed inverters will replace the
traditional rotating synchronous generators that form today's
grid. As a result, he added, " These inverters will have to work
together collectively and autonomously to also form and sustain
the grid as an ecosystem and will have to do so without causing
stability issues or interacting with each other or with other grid
elements. " This will require new hardware, software and control
principles (Figure 1), stated Prof. Divan. Investigating the
future grid, his talk suggested that at the current rate of progress,
the industry move towards multiport power converters
that are flexible, modular and scalable, and which can simultaneously
and safely interface with solar PV, batteries, generators
and loads, managing power flows between various sources/
loads and ensuring stable operation under normal, transient
and fault conditions. In his concluding remarks, Prof. Divan
said that fast-moving technologies, lagging standards, diverse
communications protocols, cybersecurity issues, hundreds of
inverter vendors, and hundreds of grid codes to comply with,
will pose many challenges, but they must be addressed soon.
However, he was optimistic that the next generation inverter
for the future grid can be a key factor in addressing climate
change and saving the only planet that we have.
Bidirectional FETs
In the professional education seminars and industry sessions,
several researchers unveiled advances in monolithic bidirectional
switches with SiC and GaN FETs (BDS or
BiDFETs), also known as four-quadrant switches. Dr.
Subhashish Bhattacharya of FREEDM Systems Center, PowerAmerica
Institute, North Carolina State University, delivered
a paper titled " Monolithic SiC-based Bidirectional FET:
Vehicle Electrification Opportunities. " In his presentation
given in session IS09, Dr. Bhattacharya focused on the four
Building Block for
Utility Scale PV Plants
Microgrid 1
Wind Farm
IEEE Power Electronics Magazine - June 2022

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