Multi-Scale Control of Power Electronic Systems

Abstract: This tutorial provides a fundamentally different perspective to multi-scale control of switching power electronic systems along with plurality of practical experimental results and is expected to be of great interest to the power electronic system engineers, professionals, educators, and students.

It is based on controlling the time evolution of the switching states (i.e., switching sequences) as well as controlling the switching transition of the power semiconductor device of the solid state electronic system. The former – i.e., switching sequence based control yields rapid response under transient condition, optimal equilibrium response, and yields seamless transition between the two states of dynamics. The first part of the tutorial will primarily focus on switching sequence based control for power electronics systems. By enabling integration of modulation and control, switching sequence based control precludes the need for ad-hoc offline modulation synthesis. In other words, an optimal switching sequence for the power converter is generated dynamically without the need for prior determination of any modulation scheme (which generates a pre-determined switching sequence) in typical conventional approaches.

One of the fundamental distinctions between switching sequence based control and conventional model predictive control is that the former ensures optimal determination of the switching sequence of the power converter under stability bound. The tutorial will provide the mechanism to carry out switching sequence based control and model predictive control syntheses and demonstrate the differences between the two optimal control schemes. Several device, converter, and network level implementations (e.g., microinverter, solar inverter, pulsed-power systems, microgrid, parallel inverters, multilevel converter, aircraft power system) of the switching sequence based control will be provided encompassing author’s multiple years of project experience encompassing leading advanced defense and energy industries.

Finally, the tutorial will focus on switching transition control. The primary objective of this control is to demonstrate how key power electronic system parameters including / and / stress, switching loss, and electromagnetic noise emission can be controlled dynamically by modulating the dynamics of the power semiconductor devices. Both electrical and newly developed optical control mechanisms to achieve switching transition control will be demonstrated. In the context of the latter, mechanisms for monolithic integration of switching sequence control as well as switching transition control will be outlined and the revolutionary impact of such a novel integration on system performance will be demonstrated with numerous recent and ongoing practical applications.

Sudip K. Mazumder is a Professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago and also the President of NextWatt LLC and also serves as the Director for the Laboratory of Energy and Switching-Electronics Systems. He received his Ph.D. from Virginia Tech in 2001. He is a Fellow of IEEE (2016) and a Distinguished Lecturer for IEEE Power Electronics Society (2016-2019). He is the Editor-at-Large for IEEE Transactions on Power Electronics. He is also a PELS AdCoM Member and the Chair for PELS TC on Sustainable Energy Systems.

He has over 25 years of professional experience and has held R&D and design positions in leading industrial organizations. His current areas of interests are optimal switching-sequence based control and stability analysis of power electronic device, converters, and networks; renewable and alternative energy based high-frequency-link conversion systems; and photonic and wide-bandgap devices and applied technologies. He has over 220 publications, 10 book/book chapters, and 11 patents, and has worked on 50+ sponsored research projects.

Dr. Mazumder received the following prestigious awards: One of the 2 best papers for May’18 issue of IEEE Transactions on Power Electronics (2018), Inventor of the Year Award (2014) from the University of Illinois at Chicago, University Scholar Award (2013) (highest university award) from the University of Illinois, NSF CAREER Award (2003) and ONR Young-Investigator Award (2005), IEEE PELS Transaction Prize Paper Award (2002), Best Paper Award at IEEE PEDG Conference (2013), Outstanding Paper Award at IEEE AINA Conference (2007), and IEEE Future Energy Challenge Award (2005).

He was the first Editor-in-Chief for Advances in Power Electronics and recently served as the Guest Editor-in-Chief for IEEE PELS and IEEE IES Transaction Special Issues. Currently he is also serving as the Guest-Editor-in-Chief for IEEE JESTPE Special Issue on Sustainable Energy through Power-Electronic Innovations in Cyber-Physical Systems and as a Lead Editor for IEEE IES Special Issue on Special Issue on Sliding mode control and observation for complex industrial systems and as an Associate Editor for IEEE IES and IEEE PELS. He is also the Chair for IEEE PELS TC on Sustainable Energy Systems and the Chair for IEEE PEDG 2021.