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A Control Design Approach for Three-Phase Grid-Connected Renewable Energy Resources

S. Ali Khajehoddin, Member, IEEE, Masoud Karimi-Ghartemani, Senior Member, IEEE, Praveen K. Jain, Fellow, IEEE, and Alireza Bakhshai, Senior Member, IEEE

AbstractThis paper presents a method to design a control system for a three-phase voltage source converter (VSC) that connects a renewable energy source to the utility grid through an output -type or -type lter. The well-known / transformation method creates coupling terms that are visible and can readily be canceled in the -type lter. Such terms, however, are very complicated when an lter is used. This paper, rst revisits the derivation of the decoupling control method for an -type output lter and then, for the rst time, derives the decoupling terms for an -type lter. Having successfully decoupled the real and reactive power loops, feedback controllers are presented and designed to achieve desirable performance. The proposed controller provides active damping of the resonance mode, robustness with respect to grid frequency, and impedance uncertainty. Moreover, a new controller is designed to improve the startup transient of the system. The methodology used in this paper is inspired from the feedback linearization theory and it provides a clear design method for the nonlinear systems. Simulation results are presented to conrm the analytical results. Index TermsActive damping, decoupling, grid-connection, , renewable energy.

I. INTRODUCTION ENEWABLE energy resources have attracted public, governmental, and academic attention due to the global energy crisis. An important technical challenge is the integration of renewable resources into the existing utility grid such that reliable power is injected without violating the grid codes and standards. For three-phase grid-connected inverter applications, the system is implemented to deliver active power as well as desired reactive power to the grid. In such systems, there are usually two control loops, one for active and another for reactive power control which are preferably decoupled from each other. Grid-connected rectiers use topologies similar to the grid-connected inverter systems with the difference of power ow direction from grid to the dc link. Usually rectiers need to operate at unity power factor, i.e., no reactive power should be drawn from the grid. Therefore, control methods developed for one can be extended to the other one.

Manuscript received October 10, 2010; revised February 21, 2011; accepted April 17, 2011. Date of publication June 02, 2011; date of current version September 21, 2011. The authors are with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Queens University, Kingston, ON, K7L 3N6, Canada (e-mail: s.ali.khajehoddin@queensu.ca; karimig@queensu.ca; praveen. jain@queensu.ca; alireza.bakhshai@queensu.ca). Color versions of one or more of the gures in this paper are available online at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org. Digital Object Identier 10.1109/TSTE.2011.2158457

A commonly used grid-connected converter topology is a voltage source converter (VSC) with an output -type or -type lter. -type lters are superior in terms of lter size and weight, however, they introduce undesirable high-frequency resonances at the output current. Passive damping of those resonances cause losses and their active damping often requires measurement of multiple signals used in a complicated control method. There are two general approaches to design the control systems for three-phase grid-connected converters: in stationary domain [1], [2] or in synchronous reference domain [3][6]. The stationary frame has the advantage of avoiding coupling terms and also the possibility of controlling harmonics but it suffers from higher order control, more complicated design, sensitivity of the design to the grid frequency [7], and digital implementation difculties known for resonant controllers [8]. The great advantage of the synchronous reference method is in mapping the ac variables into dc quantities and thus, possibility of employing simple PI controllers. A side effect of this transformation is, however, introduction of mutual coupling terms into equations. Conventionally, input decoupling terms are used to decouple active and reactive power control loops and simple PI controllers are used to close the loops. This strategy is well understood and is widely used for -type output lters [3], [4]. -type lter, the decoupling terms are complicated In an and have not been formulated so far. Instead, the -type de-type lters for the coupling terms have been applied to sake of controller design [9], [10]. This is an approximate solution which can create performance and stability problems for higher values of switching frequency to resonance frequency ratios [10]. The problem has been mitigated in [10] by adding further second-order transfer functions in the control loops. Moreover, such methods do not guarantee damping of the resonance mode. In [5], an alternative approach to tackle the problem is introduced based on a linear full state feedback and deadbeat control which does not consider the nonlinear dynamics of the dc link voltage. The proposed approach uses a transformed set of variables that transforms the control system into a linear system despite the nonlinearity of the original equations. This linear system is further decoupled into two subsystems. The two resulted linear subsystems correspond to active and reactive power control loops. The active power loop is also controlled by the dc link variable that turns out to be the dc link energy rather than dc link voltage. The nal control loop includes one integrating controller for each loop in order to achieve zero steady state error and also to achieve robustness to system uncertainties and disturbances. The design of such integrating controllers is performed using standard root-locus method without resorting

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Fig. 1. Block diagram of a typical three-phase grid-connected renewable energy system using a two-stage conversion topology.

to any trial and error. This is possible thanks to the perfect decoupling of the two loops. Another advantage of having two decoupled loops is minimization of undesirable transients of reactive current caused by changes of active power and vice versa. This, for example, can become more important when a sensitive dc load is connected to the dc link of the system. Moreover, active damping of the resonance mode is automatically achieved by appropriate selection for the location of the closed-loop poles. Moreover, the proposed method is inherently adaptive with respect to grid frequency, a characteristic that cannot easily be achieved in other approaches. This paper also introduces a method to design, formulate, and control the startup transients of the system by using additional terms in the control structure. Such terms are formulated and designed for both -type and -type converters. The paper is organized as follows. The study system is introduced in Section II and the problem formulation is formally presented in Section III. The proposed technique of decoupling and control is explained in Section IV. The startup control is presented in Section V. Section VI presents some performance evaluation results and Section VII concludes the paper. Those materials of more mathematical nature are provided in Appendix. II. STUDY SYSTEM Block diagram of a typical three-phase grid-connected renewable energy system is shown in Fig. 1. The conversion system may comprise of 1) a rst-stage converter whose main objectives are maximum power point tracking (MPPT) and performing a voltage boost, 2) a VSC that converts the dc power stored in the dc link into ac, and 3) an output lter that serves as the interface between the inverter and the grid to attenuate switching noises. The power generated by the renewable source is , and the current injected to the grid is while the dc link capacitance is and its voltage is . This structure is called the two-stage conversion system. It is possible to remove the rst stage and connect the renewable source directly to the dc link. In such a structure, called a single-stage structure, the inverter performs the MPPT as well. III. SYSTEM EQUATIONS AND PROBLEM DEFINITION A. L-Type Output Filter Fig. 2 (top) shows the single line block diagram of a threephase grid-connected converter with an output -type lter. The system equations in terms of phases , , and are (1)

Fig. 2. Single line converter block diagram with an output -type lter (bottom). or

-type lter (top)

system equations are transformed to using . Moreover, the system is transformed to frame using transformation. The resulted set of equations is (2) where the -transformation is performed using the grid voltage angle as the reference. In (2), is the grid frequency and is the grid voltage magnitude. We assume a purely sinusoidal and balanced grid voltage in this study. The power balance equation can be used to derive an equation for the dc-link voltage as follows: (3) In (3), denotes the inverter instantaneous output power (4) stands for the instantaneous power of the lter where which is zero (in balanced three-phase case). Notice that internal system losses are neglected. Thus, (3) is (5) Equations (2) and (5) describe the dynamic of the system state . Since the converter uses PWM techvariables nique, and , where and are the control signals. As a result, the nonlinear state space equations are (6) is in general a nonlinear function where the input power of the state variables. This is a third-order nonlinear multivariable system. B. LCL-Type Output Filter A single line diagram of a three-phase lter connection is shown in Fig. 2 (bottom portion). The differential equations

The

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governing this system in the

-frame can be written as

With this control, the closed-loop will have the following transfer function:

(7)

where the -transformation is performed using the grid voltage angle as the reference. With the denition of state-variables as , the control signals as , the system of (7) is a multivariable nonlinear system of order seven. C. Control Objectives For both converters with -type or -type output lters, the control objectives are (i) injecting the (maximum real and controlled reactive) powers to the grid, (ii) maintaining a pure sinusoidal form for the injected current, and (iii) controlling the peak inrush current at the startup stage. In the two-stage structure, the MPPT is performed by the rst-stage converter and the VSC transfers the maximum power to the grid by means of regulating the dc link voltage at a constant prespecied value. In the single-stage structure, however, the dc link voltage directly reects the source voltage and therefore, the dc link voltage reference is obtained from a MPPT algorithm and it is not constant anymore. In other words, the objective (i) can be further decomposed into two objectives: (i-1) regulating the dc link voltage to its reference value, and (i-2) controlling the ow of reactive power. There are few challenges in the control of such systems that are the coupling between the outputs of the system, the nonlinearities in the system equations, and grid voltage distortions. Such challenges are much more pronounced in the -type inverter. IV. PROPOSED CONTROL SYSTEM A. Proposed Method for L-Type Filters The reactive power control loop, formulated by the second equation in (2), can be decoupled from the dc-link control loop by introducing a new input variable . The equation thus becomes which is represented by the transfer function . In other words, from the new input variable to the output reactive current, the system is decoupled and SISO. Now, in order to ensure zero steady-state error in the presence of uncertainties, we use a simple integrating ( ) controller for this loop as . The control signal will then be equal to

The constants and can easily be selected to achieve a desirable transient response. The dc-link control loop can be linearized using transformation that is the energy stored in the dc-link. This change of coordinates can be obtained using a full state feedback linearization technique as explained briey in Appendix A. However, in this case due, to simplicity of the -lter case, the solution is found intuitively. Using the output feedback linearization technique, the dc-link control loop can be represented as (9) This form allows decoupling and also feedback linearization of the equations by choosing

The resulted equations will be (10) that has a transfer function . To ensure zero steady state error in the presence of uncertainties, an controller is used. The closed-loop transfer function is

which can have a desirable transient response provided that the constants and are properly selected. The control signal for the dc-link control loop is given by

(11) is a nonlinear In the above equations, the input power time varying variable whose derivative is shown in the equations. In renewable energy applications, this quantity is slow varying compared to the dynamics of the controller and moreover, if maximum power point tracking is utilized, the input power derivative variations will be around zero. Furthermore, the integral controller in the system will compensate any slow variations of the quantity as a disturbance signal. As a result, in

(8)

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Fig. 3. Control system block diagram of the

-type converter.

Fig. 4. Control system block diagram of the

-type converter (recongured according to conventional approach).

Fig. 5. Root locus of the reactive current control loop for -type converter.

Fig. 6. Root locus of the dc-link energy control loop for -type converter.

the nal implementation of the controller the power derivative term is not considered. Fig. 3 shows the control system block diagram of the -type converter using the proposed method. The main decoupling terms are and that are well known in the literature [3]. The term also helps generating a better startup transient. However, the proposed method is different from the conventional method in three aspects: 1) the system is globally linear from controllers point of view; 2) the introduction of terms make the control system design as simple as designing an integral controller; and 3) a feed-forward (or decoupling) term associated with the input power is also included in the real

power loop. This latter term is also from the same nature of and it mainly helps avoiding large startup transients. The integrating controller ensures compensation of these two terms in the steady state anyway. Fig. 4 shows a recongured version of Fig. 3 in a way that it resembles the conventional structure. The design process can be done by selecting and obtaining (or ) using the root-locus method. Figs. 5 and 6 show the root locus of the decoupled control loops of the proposed system. The system parameters are , mH, , . The controller gains for the desired location of closed-loop poles are and .

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B. Proposed Method for LCL-Type Filters -type converter is more compliControl design for the cated than the -type converter because the number of equations is higher and the decoupling terms are not visible. In the approach proposed in [9], the capacitor in the output lter is neglected and the lter is treated like a simple lter with . To take advantage of -type lters, the tendency is to operate at switching frequencies and subsequently sampling frequency much higher than the resonant frequency [1]. However, this approximation of with , can easily cause performance deterioration or even instability as the switching (sampling) frequency increases beyond four times the resonant frequency [10]. In this paper, the decoupling terms and controller design are accomplished without any approximation and as a result the stability and performance of the system are not affected by the switching (sampling) frequency. The system equations using the lter are given by (7). The reactive power is equal to , thus, can solely be used to control the reactive power. Using the feedback linearization technique (see Appendix A) one can write

chosen positive number. Then, a controller as simple as results in the following closed-loop transfer function:

that yields a desirable transient response should and are properly selected. Therefore, the control law can be written as

(13) Similar to the lter, the active power control loop is designed via the dc-link voltage (or energy) control. Based on the feedback linearization technique and with respect to (7), write

(12) where and is the new input signal. Thus, from to the output reactive current , the system is SISO and decoupled. As a result, the open-loop transfer function will be

(14) In deriving the above equations, the time derivatives of are neglected based on the justication made for the lter. Thus, the open-loop transfer function is

A simple selection is results in

, , where

that is a properly

which can be simplied to with the selection of

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Fig. 7. Control system block diagram of the

-type converter.

, where is a positive real number. Using an controller , the closed-loop system will have the following transfer function:

The coefcients and can readily be selected to place the poles at a desired location and to achieve desirable transient response. Therefore, the control law can be written as

(15) Fig. 7 shows the control system block diagram of the -type converter using the proposed method. It can be observed that the system is linear from to and from to . The decoupling terms are shown in terms of to that are explained above. It is worth mentioning that these terms are linear combination of the system state variables and there are no time derivatives involved. The design procedure comprises selection of and obtaining (and ) using a simple root-locus curve. Figs. 8 and 9 show the root locus of the decoupled control loops of the proposed system. The system parameters are , mH, H, F, , . The controller gains for the desired location of closed-loop poles are and , where and are shown in Fig. 7. V. STARTUP CONTROL The initial startup stage of the system depends very much on the initial conditions of the system and their interaction with the control algorithm. This can cause harsh behavior at the startup stage leading to system failures. In this paper, it is proposed to include constant terms to the control loops, shown by and in Fig. 3 to smooth such behavior. This section proposes a method to optimally design such constants. Assume that the command signal is set to zero and the linear loop dynamics is described by where the scalar is the startup smoothing term. The objective is to design the term such that the startup behavior of is controlled. The response of this system can be expressed as , where is the vector of initial conditions, is the systems

Fig. 8. Root locus of the reactive current control loop for

-type converter.

Fig. 9. Root locus of the dc-link energy control loop for

-type converter.

response to the initial conditions (with no constant input), and is the systems response to the unity constant input (with no initial conditions). By dening the following norm: , where is a positive semidenite matrix, one can conclude . By solving the time derivative equation with respect to , results in (16)

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Fig. 11. Impact of startup controller for the

-type lter.

Fig. 10. Impact of startup controller for the

-type lter.

The matrix must be properly chosen to ensure the best response. The following is the summary of results for and lters, respectively. A. L-Type Filter The reactive power loop (in the absence of a command signal) is described by , . The initial conditions are , . Therefore, the response to initial conditions, i.e., , is identically zero. This results in that no smoothing term is required and thus . The dc link energy loop (in the absence of a command signal) is described by , , . The initial conditions are , , . The expression (16) will be equal to about for the numerical values of mH, F, V, and . The matrix is a diagonal matrix with diagonal elements equal to 0 and 1, respectively. Fig. 10 shows that the startup controller can signicantly smooth the initial stage of the responses. In this gure, a jump from 1 to 2 kW (in the input power ) is applied at s and a jump from zero to 2.5 A in reactive current is applied at s. As mentioned, the reactive power loop needs no startup control. It is also worth mentioning that the startup coefcient does not depend on the value of and thus, it can be designed independent from the system operating point. B. LCL-Type lter The dc link energy control loop is described by the following equations: , , , , , where . The initial conditions are , , , where . Calculating from (16) (for the numerical values of mH F, F, , , F) results in . The matrix is chosen to be diagonal with elements zero except for the last one that is unity.

The reactive power control loop is described by the following equations: , , , , where . The initial conditions are , , , . The same method (used above) for startup control is applied and it failed to satisfactorily improve the startup control. Therefore, we generalized the startup controller from a constant value to a full state feedback as follows. The startup controller is equal to . The gain vector is calculated using the LQR technique that minimizes the cost function . Selection of matrix is crucial in this process. It is performed by varying diagonal elements over some positive range and observing the root-locus as well as the startup response. Fig. 11 shows the closed-loop system response to a command of real power at s and a command of reactive power at s. Highly satisfactory startup transient is observed. Without this controller, the startup responses are very harsh and intolerable (not shown). VI. PERFORMANCE EVALUATION RESULTS The proposed method is realized on a 3-kW solar photovoltaic (PV) system that is directly connected to the dc link and a three-phase PWM inverter is used. The switching frequency is 20 kHz and the power system parameters are mH, F, mH, F. The controller gains are designed using the proposed technique for and -type lters. The whole system is simulated in PSIM software. Several simulation results are presented in this section to verify static and dynamic performances and robustness of the proposed method. A simulation scenario is dened as follows: the system starts from zero to full irradiation level and the irradiation level drops 50% at 0.05 s and the command for reactive current steps from zero to 20 A at s. Fig. 12 shows the graphs of grid current components and (top portion), the dc-link voltage (middle portion) and the grid currents in frame (bottom portion) for the -type lter. It is observed that the and waveforms follow their commands closely. The dc link voltage is regulated to 500 V with small transients at the jump instants. The same simulation scenario is applied to the -type lter and the results are shown in Fig. 13. Desirable performance

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Fig. 12. Performance of the -type controller: d and q axes grid current (top), grid currents (bottom). dc link voltage (middle) and

Fig. 14. Performance of the -type controller with 250 H uncertainty in grid the grid impedance: d and q axes grid current (top), dc link voltage, currents and input power (bottom).

Further, in order to verify robustness of the proposed method with respect to different parameters, the following three sets of simulations are performed using the same simulation scenario dened above. In one simulation, an uncertainty in the grid impedance with the value of 250 H is considered. The simulation results are shown in Fig. 14. The control system tolerates this large uncertainty and only small impacts on transient responses are observed. Another simulation considers the impact of one sample delay corresponding to calculation time. The sampling frequency is 20 kHz for this simulation. The results are shown in Fig. 15 which conrm desirable operation of the control system with only minor impacts on the transient response due to this delay. One advantage of the proposed control method is that its control gains are derived in terms of the system frequency. Therefore, the same control design can be used for systems with different values of frequency. Fig. 16 shows a simulation where the system frequency is 80 Hz. The performance is almost identical with that of the 60-Hz system shown in Fig. 13.

VII. CONCLUSION For three-phase grid-connected inverter systems, control methods are proposed 1) to accurately formulate the decoupling terms in and -type output lters, 2) to design its controller gains, and 3) to control the startup transient of the system. Advantages of the methods are 1) systematic treatment of the problem using known control theories, 2) globally linear control loops using appropriate change of coordinates, 3) systematic design procedure, and 4) robustness against grid uncertainties. The proposed method obviates the need for

Fig. 13. Performance of the -type controller: d and q axes grid current grid currents and input power (bottom). (top), dc link voltage,

of the controller in tracking the power commands and in regulating the dc link voltage is observed. The very bottom portion in Fig. 13 shows variations of the PV power. It conrms smooth variations of this variable.

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Fig. 17. Diagram of output feedback linearization technique used in this paper.

APPENDIX A REVIEW OF FEEDBACK LINEARIZATION TECHNIQUE The feedback linearization technique [11], [12] is a useful concept of nonlinear control theory. Consider a single-input single-output (SISO) system described by the following state-space equations: (17) where is the -dimensional state vector, is the control signal, and is the output. The full-state feedback linearization technique involves a coordinate transformation on the state vector such as and also on the control signals such that the state-space equations transform to the linear representation . For the -type and -type converter, the linearizing coordinate is obtained by dening the dc link energy as the new state variable. The output feedback linearization is a special case of the state feedback linearization in the sense that the new coordinates consists of the output and its time-derivatives up to a certain degree. Such a degree is called the relative degree of the system. The time-derivative of the output signal is , where is the Lie derivative and is dened as . Assume that and calculate the second derivation of with respect to time as , where by denition . We keep taking time derivatives until the factor in front of becomes nonzero. Assume that this occurs for , i.e., and . Dene the new input and thus the that is a linear system of order . system becomes This linear system has all its poles at origin and has no zero. Let

Fig. 15. Performance of the -type controller with the same control design (performed for 60 Hz) working at a system frequency of 80 Hz: d and q axes grid currents and input power (bottom). grid current (top), dc link voltage,

where for is an algebraic function of the system state variables and does not use any time differentiation of the state variables. Then the transfer function from to is

Fig. 16. Performance of the -type controller with the same control design (performed for 60 Hz) working at a system frequency of 80 Hz: and axes grid currents and input power (bottom). grid current (top), dc link voltage,

incorporating additional lters to partially compensate for instabilities caused by approximate decoupling in high switching frequencies.

and its poles can be arbitrarily placed by selecting s. When the command is a constant signal, a simple integrating ( ) controller can be used to achieve desired response. Block diagram of the whole system is shown in Fig. 17. The scalar is the relative degree of system and this method of control leaves state

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In case a multi-input multi-output (MIMO) system is concerned, the same process can be performed on every output of the system. If the number of control inputs is equal to the number of outputs (a square system), then it is possible to arrive at a new system of coordinates and new set of inputs that make the system decompose into multi-SISO systems. This is indeed the case with grid connection of three-phase inverters as it is discussed in this paper. REFERENCES
[1] I. Gabe, V. Montagner, and H. Pinheiro, Design and implementation of a robust current controller for VSI connected to the grid through an LCL lter, IEEE Trans. Power Electron., vol. 24, no. 6, pp. 14441452, Jun. 2009. [2] P. Loh and D. Holmes, Analysis of multiloop control strategies for LC/CL/LCL-ltered voltage-source and current-source inverters, IEEE Trans. Ind. Appl., vol. 41, no. 2, pp. 644654, Mar./Apr. 2005. [3] F. Blaabjerg, R. Teodorescu, M. Liserre, and A. Timbus, Overview of control and grid synchronization for distributed power generation systems, IEEE Trans. Ind. Electron., vol. 53, no. 5, pp. 13981409, Oct. 2006. [4] M. Liserre, R. Teodorescu, F. Blaabjerg, and D. di Elettrotecnica, Multiple harmonics control for three-phase grid converter systems with the use of PI-RES current controller in a rotating frame, IEEE Trans. Power Electron., vol. 21, no. 3, pp. 836841, May 2006. [5] E. Wu and P. Lehn, Digital current control of a voltage source converter with active damping of LCL resonance, IEEE Trans. Power Electron., vol. 21, no. 5, pp. 13641373, Sep. 2006. [6] M. Malinowski and S. Bernet, A simple voltage sensorless active lter, damping scheme for three-phase PWM converters with an IEEE Trans. Ind. Electron., vol. 55, no. 4, pp. 18761880, Apr. 2008. [7] A. Timbus, M. Ciobotaru, R. Teodorescu, and F. Blaabjerg, Adaptive resonant controller for grid-connected converters in distributed power generation systems 2006, p. 6. [8] R. Teodorescu, F. Blaabjerg, M. Liserre, and P. Loh, Proportionalresonant controllers and lters for grid-connected voltage-source converters, in Proc. Inst. Elect. Eng. Electric Power Applications, 2006, vol. 153, no. 5, pp. 750762, IET. [9] M. Liserre, F. Blaabjerg, S. Hansen, and D. di Elettrotecnica, Design and control of an lcl-lter-based three-phase active rectier, IEEE Trans. Ind. Appl., vol. 41, no. 5, pp. 12811291, Sep./Oct. 2005. [10] J. Dannehl, C. Wessels, and F. Fuchs, Limitations of voltage-oriented lters, PI current control of grid-connected pwm rectiers with IEEE Trans. Ind. Electron., vol. 56, no. 2, pp. 380388, Feb. 2009. [11] J. Slotine and W. Li et al., Applied Nonlinear Control. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1991. [12] H. Khalil and J. Grizzle, Nonlinear Systems. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1996. S. Ali Khajehoddin (S04M10) received the B.Sc. degree in electrical engineering and the M.Sc. degree from Isfahan University of Technology, Iran, in 1997 and 2000, and the Ph.D. degree from Queens University, Kingston, ON, Canada, in 2010. After completing his Masters, he established a company where he developed and produced digital meters and high-tech power system analyzers for ve years. For his doctoral research at Queens, he worked on the design and implementation of compact and durable micro-inverters for photovoltaic (PV) grid connected systems. Since 2010, he has been working at SPARQ systems Inc. toward mass-production and commercialization of micro-inverters. His research interests include power electronics, control systems, power quality, and renewable energy systems mainly PV systems.

Dr. Khajehoddin has led four patents and was awarded several scholarships, including the MITACS Industrial Postdoctoral Fellowship and the Ontario Graduate Scholarship.

Masoud Karimi Ghartemani (M01SM09) received the B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees in electrical engineering in 1993 and 1995 from Isfahan University of Technology, Iran. He received the Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from University of Toronto in 2004. He was a faculty member at Sharif University of Technology from 2005 to 2008. He is currently a researcher with the Queens Centre for Energy and Power Electronics Research (ePOWER) at the Queens University, ON, Canada. His research interests include power system stability and control, grid-integration of renewable energy systems, and power quality.

Praveen K. Jain (S86M88SM91F02) received the B.E. degree (with honors) from the University of Allahabad, India, and the M.A.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Toronto, Canada in 1980, 1984, and 1987, respectively, all in electrical engineering. Currently he is a Professor and Canada Research Chair at the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Queens University, Kingston, Canada, and the Director of the Queens Centre for Energy and Power Electronics Research (ePOWER). He has received over $20M cash and $20M in-kind in external research funding to conduct research in the eld of power electronics. He has supervised more than 75 graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, and research engineers. He has published over 350 technical papers (including more than 90 IEEE Transactions papers) and has over 50 patents (granted and pending). He is also a Founder of CHiL Semiconductor in Tewksbury, MA (recently acquired by IR); and SPARQ System in Kingston, ON, Canada. Prior to joining Queens, he has worked as a Professor at Concordia University (19942000), a Technical Advisor at Nortel (19901994), a Senior Space Power Electronics Engineer at Canadian Astronautics Ltd. (19871990), a Design Engineer at ABB (1981), and a Production Engineer at Crompton Greaves (1980). In addition, he has consulted with Astec, Ballard Power, Freescale, General Electric, Intel, and Nortel. Dr. Jain is an Associate Editor of the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER ELECTRONICS and an Editor of International Journal of Power Electronics. He is also a Distinguished Lecturer of IEEE Industry Applications Society. He is a Fellow of the Engineering Institute of Canada (EIC) and the Canadian Academy of Engineering (CAE). He is also the recipient of the 2011 IEEE Newell Awardthe highest eld award in Power Electronics.

Alireza Bakhshai (M03SM09) received the B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees from the Isfahan University of Technology, Isfahan, Iran, in 1984 and 1986, respectively, and the Ph.D. degree from Concordia University, Montreal, QC, Canada, in 1997. From 1986 to 1993 and from 1998 to 2004, he was on the faculty of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Isfahan University of Technology. He was a Postdoctoral Fellow from 1997 to 1998 at Concordia University. Currently, he is with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Queens University, Kingston, ON, Canada. His research interests include high-power electronics, distributed generation, wind energy, smart grid, control systems, and exible ac transmission systems.