Power Electronics and Drives

The main field of investigation is the efficient regulation and control of power and energy flow in systems incorporating electric circuits, machines, drives, inverters and systems using power semiconductor switching devices. Major research and innovation has been implemented over the past decade in areas such as rapidly increasing deployment of  inverter-based resources (IBR) for grid integration of renewable energy sources (RES) and the design and development of active filters for improving power quality in electrical grids. With the tremendous growth in the use of computational resources on industrial sites and commercial buildings, there is growing concern about their impact on power quality.

Major initiatives funded by industry and government agencies are under way to design and deploy active filters for controlling current harmonics based on the switched-capacitor techniques as pioneered within the Reseach Centre. The application of such techniques to flexible AC transmission systems (FACTS) for reactive power and stability control in power distribution and transmission systems is also under investigation.