Keynote Lectures
Keynote — The 6G Networks for a New Smart Energy
Alessandro Vizzarri, University of Rome Tor Vergata, Italy
Abstract:
The next communication network, IMT-2030 (also known as 6G), is characterized by innovative features, such as a very high peak data rate and user-experienced data rate, together with a very low latency and wide coverage. The native integration with Non-Terrestrial Networks and the massive usage of Internet of Things (IoT) devices enable real ubiquitous connectivity. Finally, the native implementation of AI/ML techniques and methodologies and the powerful integration with Edge Cloud Computing (ECC) platforms allow the 6G networks to add high levels of intelligence and automation up to the edges and the end users.
In the energy sector, all these features will open new scenarios and provide new opportunities together with challenges to be managed.
The speech introduces the most important features and the context of the 6G networks, to then continue with the description of its impact on the energy sector. Energy power consumption, energy management of buildings, assets and electric vehicles, intelligent and automated smart grids, and management of very intelligent and massive IoT devices are only some examples of possible applications supported and enhanced by the 6G networks.
Biography
Alessandro Vizzarri received a degree in Electronic Engineering from the University of Bologna, a PhD in Telecommunication Engineering and Microelectronics from the University of Rome Tor Vergata, and a post-lauream diploma from the Superior Institute of Communication (Italian Ministry of Enterprises and Made in Italy, Rome).
He is a Professor in Telecommunications at the University of Rome Tor Vergata (Italy).
He is/was a Manager Consultant for vendor, manufacturing, and consultancy companies operating in the ICT market, in particular wireless networks (UMTS/HSPA, LTE, WiFi,..), Broadcast Networks (DVB-S/T/H), Digital Transmissions, Project Management, Business Management. He is/was a Senior Project Manager in several research projects on ICT technologies at European and international levels.
His research interests include Wireless (5G/BY5G/6G), Non-Terrestrial (LEO/HAPS/UAV) and Broadcast Networks, Radio Network Planning, O-RAN, QoS/QoE, interoperability, Goal-oriented Semantic Networks, Blockchain and Web3 Security, Digital Economy, Entrepreneurship, Regulation and Standardization.
He is President of the Italian Association of Telecommunication Engineers (AICT) and a member of the Order of Engineers in Rome (Italy). He was the Professional & Career Activities Coordinator at the IEEE Italy Section.
Keynote — Ultra-Fast Charging and Ubiquitous Infrastructure
Don Tan, IEEE TA VP-Elect, 2025, USA
Abstract:
As the EV technology for the driving train entered the phase of maturity with many superior performances, significant progress in battery technologies ushed in the era of electrical vehicle proliferation. Battery-powered electric vehicles (BEV) are now in price parity with internal combustion engine (ICE) cars, even being more competitive. Many countries/regions now have aggressive mandates towards zero-emission to combat global climate change. A major remaining obstacle is the availability of ultra-fast charging required for long-haul driving and ubiquitous charging for everyday driving. We will discuss the challenges facing ultra-fast charging and available solutions coming on the horizon. We will provide a new thinking in achieving ubiquitous charging infrastructure by leveraging existing and readily-available technologies. For autonomous vehicles, wireless power charging provides a path forward. The newly-founded IEEE Transportation Electrification Council (TEC) is providing much-needed leadership in the technical space to help pushing for ubiquitous charging infrastructure on a global scale.
Biography
Dr. Tan has served as Distinguished Engineer, Fellow, Chief Engineer-Power Conversion, Program Manager, Department Manager, and Center Director in a US Fortune 500 corporation. Don earned his PhD from Caltech. He is an IEEE fellow and a Member of the National Academy of Engineering, USA. Unusually prolific as a visionary technical leader in ultra-efficient power conversion and electronic energy systems, Dr. Tan has pioneered breakthrough innovations with numerous high impact industry firsts and record performances that received commendations from the highest level of US Government. He has developed hundreds of designs and thousands of hardware units deployed for space applications without a single on-orbit failure. His suite of world-class electronics performed flawlessly on the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), located one million miles away, achieving world-record breaking performances.
Dr. Tan is the IEEE Technical Activities Vice President-Elect 2025, founding President of IEEE Transportation Electrification Council, Chair of IEEE Fellow Advisory and Oversight Subcommittee, and Vice Chair of IEEE Industry Engagement Committee. Among numerous others, Don has served as Division II Director, IEEE Board of Directors; Fellow Committee Chair, IEEE PELS/PES eGrid Steering Committee Chair, PELS Long Range Planning Committee Chair, Nomination Committee Chair, PELS President, Editor-in-Chief (Founding) for IEEE Journal of Emerging and Selected Topics in Power Electronics, APEC (the fourth largest event in IEEE) General Chair, PELS Vice President-Operations, Guest Editor-in-Chief for IEEE Transactions on Power Electronics and IEEE Transactions on Industry Applications, Fellow Committee, PELS Vice President-Meetings, IEEE Chair for IEEE/Google Little Box Challenge (awarded $1M cash prize), and IEEE/DoD Working Group Chair, developed IEEE/ANSI standards 1515/1573. Don has delivered about 120 keynotes/invited global presentations. He has received more than $30M+ external customer funding for research and technology development. He also serves on many prestigious national and international award, review and selection committees.
Keynote — Modeling, Analysis, and Discontinuous Control Methods of Power Electronics Systems
Jianxing Liu, Harbin Institute of Technology, China
Abstract:
In modern society, power electronics systems are the cornerstone of the electrical infrastructure, playing a crucial role in energy conversion within power grids, electric vehicle operation, and industrial machinery. As technology advances, the demand for more efficient, stable, and reliable power electronics control has been growing steadily.
Traditional control methods in power electronics, such as PI control, although having been widely used, have several drawbacks. For instance, they often struggle with maintaining high-performance operation under complex and changing conditions. They are highly sensitive to parameter variations in power electronics devices, such as the impact of aging-induced resistance or capacitance changes in components. Also, when facing external disturbances like sudden load changes or abrupt active power changes in the power system, traditional control methods may lead to instability in the system, and their dynamic response is limited, which is not suitable for scenarios requiring rapid adjustments.
This talk will discuss the modeling, analysis and discontinuous control methods of power electronics systems, with a focus on improving its robustness and dynamic response. Discontinuous control, especially the sliding mode control, has received considerable attention due to its significant advantages, such as fast dynamic response, simplicity of implementation, robustness to external disturbances, insensitivity to model errors and parameter variations, and other excellent dynamical and transient performance, which is a promising alternative for regulate the complex power electronics systems. This talk is dedicated to an in-depth exploration of the design, analysis and application of discontinuous control within power electronics systems. By conducting a comprehensive comparison between discontinuous control and representative conventional algorithms, we aim to see the potential and application prospects of sliding mode control in the field of power electronics systems.
Biography
Dr. Jianxing Liu is a Full Professor in the Department of Control Science and Engineering at Harbin Institute of Technology. His research interests primarily focus on discontinuous control methods such as sliding mode control, and their applications to power electronic systems. Dr. Liu has authored two research monographs and published over 100 research papers in prestigious international journals, including over 70 papers in IEEE Transactions series and 16 papers recognized as ESI Highly Cited Papers/Hot Papers. His works have been cited more than 8,000 times on Google Scholar, and he holds an H-index of 48. In particular, Dr. Liu was named a Clarivate Highly Cited Researcher in Engineering during 2019-2022.
Currently, Dr. Liu serves as an Associate Editor for several leading journals, including IEEE/CAA Journal of Automatica Sinica, IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems II: Express Briefs, IEEE Systems Journal, International Journal of Electronics, Nonlinear Dynamics, ISA Transactions, International Journal of Circuit Theory and Applications, etc.
Keynote — Synchronized Phasor Measurement Based Power Control and Dispatching of Flexible Traction System
Mingchao Xia, Beijing Jiaotong University, China
Abstract:
Flexible traction system may use the renewable energy, regenerative braking energy as traction power, and avoid the dead zone issue in traction network. The system structure, converter topology, power control and energy dispatching problems are investigated in this work. The system can restrain the loop current and improve the flexibility of system operation.
Biography
Prof. Xia is a professor at Shenyang University of Technology. He received the B.S. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from Tsinghua University, Beijing, China, in 1998 and in 2003, respectively. Prof. Xia Mainly engaged in research on transportation-energy integration, transportation electrification, energy internet, active distribution network, comprehensive energy system, electric vehicle charging optimization, etc. He is a pioneer in the research of transportation-energy integration and interactive scheduling of flexible loads such as electric vehicles. His research works have been supported by over 15 funding such as the National Key R&D Program China, the National Natural Science Foundation of China’s “Key” projects and many companies, with total funding exceeds 10M RMB. He has published more than 100 technical papers, filed 15 national patents, co-authored 2 textbooks, edited 1 book and granted 2 software copyrights. He is a Fellow of the IET and a Senior Member of IEEE, and vice chair of the IEEE PES China Chapters Council Conference Committee
Keynote — Advanced Computation for Power Systems
Peter Palensky, TU Delft, Netherlands
Abstract:
Power systems require new computational methods for design, analysis and operations. Faster dynamics, digital controls, and inverter-based assets are exceeding the traditional tool-set between eigenvalues and inertia. The recent years, however, brought innovations that are promising: Data driven methods, machine learning, quantum computing, cyber-physical models, and digital twins come at the right time in order to describe these new, complex power systems. This talk will introduce you to the basic concepts and show you first results out of research and industry.
Biography
Peter Palensky is full Professor and head of department Electrical Sustainable Energy, at TU Delft, Faculty for Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science, Netherlands. He also serves as Chairman of the Delft Energy Initiative, and as Scientific Director of TU Delft’s PowerWeb institute, a cross-faculty think tank for integrated and intelligent energy systems, and as PI of the Amsterdam Metropolitan Solutions Institute. He gives classes in Energy Efficiency and Intelligent Electrical Power Grids and supervises 40 PhD students in the area of smart power systems. Their topics range from advanced controls, via machine learning up to cyber-security. Prof. Palensky is internationally known for his work on modeling and simulation of future power systems, for cyber-physical digital twins, and for connecting leading edge research with industrial applications in the energy sector. He is active in several international committees such as ISO, CIGRE, or IEEE. He served as Editorin-Chief of the IEEE Industrial Electronics Magazine, and is associate editor for several other IEEE journals, and member of IES finance and publication committees. His career started as researcher at the Vienna University of Technology, where he lead and conducted industrial projects in the area of energy systems automation from 1997 until 2001. 2001, after his PhD on distributed energy management he co-founded Envidatec GmbH, a Hamburg-based startup on energy automation and analytics. 2002 he became Ass. Prof at TU Vienna, and in 2008 he joined the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory for research on wide area distributed energy management systems and demand response technology. He then became associate Professor at the University of Pretoria, South Africa, Department of Electrical, Electronic and Computer Engineering. Later he was appointed the first Principal Scientist of the Austrian Institute of Technology, and head of the business unit for sustainable buildings and smart cities
Keynote — Grid Forming Control at IBR Based Power Systems
Tobias Geyer, ABB System Drives, Switzerland
Abstract:
This keynote explores what it takes for model predictive control (MPC) to make a break-through in industry. While the low-power converter industry has been slow in adopting the most widely investigated MPC methods, MPC has started to revolutionize high-power converters by increasing their rated power, lowering their cost and ensuring their safe operation in the presence of grid disturbances and faults. In particular model predictive pulse pattern control (MP3C) fully exploits the performance capabiltiy of high-power converters by combining the benefits of MPC with the optimal steady-state performance of optimized pulse patterns. The MP3C principle can be applied to a wide range of applications, including medium-voltage drives, low-voltage traction converters, and modular multilevel converters. For load commutated inverters, model predictive torque control (MPTC) increases the drive’s efficiency and robustness to grid disturbances. Both methods have been commercialized and will be discussed in detail.
Biography
Tobias Geyer is a Corporate Executive Engineer at ABB System Drives in Switzerland and R&D platform manager of the ACS6000 and ACS6080. His research interest are high-power converters and drives, optimized pulse patterns and model predictive control. Dr. Geyer received the M.Sc. in electrical engineering, the Ph.D. in control theory and the Habilitation degree in power electronics from ETH Zurich in 2000, 2005 and 2017, respectively. He was appointed as an extraordinary professor at Stellenbosch University in 2017 and has been teaching a course at ETH Zurich since 2016. He has received five IEEE prize paper awards, filed about 90 patents and co-authored more than 170 peer-reviewed publications. He has co-supervised more than 25 students, among them 8 Ph.D. students. He is a former distinguished lecturer of the IEEE Power Electronics Society and a former associate editor of the IEEE Transactions on Power Electronics. Dr. Geyer is a Fellow of the IEEE.
