CISE Seminar: Sairaj Dhople, Professor, University of Minnesota

Circuit Solutions to Control, Optimization, Modeling, and Analysis Challenges for Power Electronics

Power grids the world over are transforming in form and function with the integration of power electronics converters across scales. Challenges precipitated by this transition are several and they call for new paradigms for modeling, analysis, control, and optimization. We adopt a circuit-theoretic lens to propose solutions to a few key challenges in this regard. Three instances are presented: a control strategy for grid-forming inverters leveraging the dynamics of nonlinear oscillators, an approach to leverage systematically engineered combinations of digital and analog circuits for real-time optimization, and synthesizing equivalent-circuit representations for control- and physical-layer subsystems of power electronics to model their dynamics and quantify large-signal stability. Through these vignettes, we demonstrate the capability to control, optimize, model, and analyze power electronics converters with the flexibility, speed, and universality afforded by familiar circuit elements and circuit laws.

Sairaj Dhople received the B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2007, 2009, and 2012. He is currently the Oscar A. Schott Professor with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Minnesota. His research interests include modeling, analysis, and control of power electronics and power systems with a focus on renewable integration. Dr. Dhople was the recipient of the National Science Foundation CAREER Award in 2015 and the Outstanding Young Engineer Award from the IEEE Power and Energy Society in 2019. He has also received the 2021 IEEE Power and Energy Society Prize Paper Award and the 2022 IEEE Transactions on Power Electronics (Second Place) Prize Paper Award.

Faculty Host: Emiliano Dall'Anese

Student Host: Umran Yungucu