IEEE Power Electronics Magazine - September 2017 - 8

President's Message

by Alan Mantooth

Power Electronics:
A Global Connection

uring these past few months,
I've spent a considerable
amount of time in Asia,
including South Korea, Japan, and
Taiwan. I continue to be impressed
at the quality and volume of activity
in the field of power electronics.
This activity was on display at several industry conferences this year. I
was able to attend the IEEE International Future Energy Electronics
Conference, which was colocated
with the Energy Conversion Congress and Exposition (ECCE-Asia)
held in Kaohsiung, Taiwan. This conference was very well organized by
Peter Liang, general chair of the conference, and his organizing committee. ECCE-Asia continues on a positive path, demonstrating the growth
of power electronics in this part of
the world.
Some of our technical committees in the IEEE Power Electronics
Society (PELS) hosted their ma i n
con ferences t h is su m mer, s uc h
a s the Workshop on Control and
Modeling for Power Electronics in
Stanford, California, and the IEEE
International Electrification Conference and Expo in Chicago, Illinois. I
hope you had a chance to attend one
of these conferences to share your
recent work or to catch up with
colleagues. These more topical symposia are an excellent venue for inDigital Object Identifier 10.1109/MPEL.2017.2719199
Date of publication: 8 September 2017

IEEE POWER ELECTRONICS MAGAZINE

depth discussions of advances and
emerging technologies.

FEPPCON Workshop
One of the activities the Society held
this past June was its biennial technical strategic planning workshop, the
IEEE Future of Electronic Power Processing and Conversion (FEPPCON).
Every two years, PELS convenes
experts from all over the world for a
three-day workshop to discuss current
and emerging topics relevant to our
field of interest with the purpose of
predicting the developments to come
and giving thought to how we as a
Society should respond.
At the 2015 FEPPCON we discussed the impact (or lack thereof) of
power electronics in the electric power
grid. With the advent of wide-bandgap
semiconductors, continued improvements in silicon power devices, everimproving control methods, and the
exponential growth of renewable
energy sources on the grid, the attendees felt that it was time to revisit
grid-connected power electronics.
The outcome from these discussions
was the creation of an ad hoc committee on electronic transmission and distribution (eT&D) and the formation of
a workshop by that same name. IEEE
PELS Senior Past President Don Tan
has taken the lead to organize the first
two workshops on eT&D. The first was
held in Hefei, China, in 2016, and the
second will be at Aalborg University in
Denmark in November of this year.

z September 2017

Another outcome from FEPPCON
was the creation of the International
Technology Roadmap for Wide-Bandgap Semiconductors (ITRW), which
has now taken off under the leadership of IEEE PELS Past President
Braham Ferreira and Executive Vice
President for Standards Peter Wilson.
The following topics were discussed at this year's FEPPCON:
■ power-system infrastructure and
eT&D
■ power electronic systems
■ transportation
■ power devices and integration
■ Internet of Things and cybersecurity
■ other future 2025 applications.
These topics served to reinforce the
fact that power electronics is truly all
around us. In a future issue of IEEE
Power Electronics Magazine, articles
that summarize the sessions composed
by the respective topic chairs will be
published. Out of this, we envision new
initiatives will be started that are analogous to eT&D or ITRW.
In fact, this issue of the magazine
includes an article by Editor-in-Chief
Ashok Bindra on securing power
against cyberattacks. Since the
Ukraine cyberattacks in 2015 and 2016,
awareness of these vulnerabilities has
grown, and research and development in these areas have intensified.
It is indeed a topic that the Society
feels is relevant to today's power
electronics engineers-and not just
for grid-connected power electronics.
In an increasingly connected world,

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Power Electronics Magazine - September 2017