CURENT’s Deputy Director, Dr. Yilu Liu, was the keynote speaker at the Executive Women’s Association of Knoxville’s End of the Year luncheon at Bistro By The Tracks on Wednesday, December 4. The Executive Women’s Association is an organization composed of more than 150 women leaders in business, government, and academia in Knoxville.  Dr. Liu discussed her career, her research, and the future of the power grid. 

On November 21, 2024, the CURENT research center welcomed a team from the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), a Principal Member of the CURENT Industry Program. The visiting delegation included Anish Gaikwad (Deputy Director of Transmission Operations & Planning), Vikas Singhvi (Program Manager of P39 Transmission Operations), and Lin Zhu (Senior Technical Leader).

Dr. Fran Li, the Director of CURENT, greeted the visitors and provided an overview of the center’s mission and activities. Dr. Yilu Liu and Dr. Kai Sun shared insights into their recent projects funded by EPRI. In turn, the EPRI team presented their ongoing research programs.

The meeting also featured collaborative discussions on future opportunities for joint efforts. The day concluded with a tour of CURENT’s state-of-the-art labs.

Logistical support for the event was provided by Mr. Michael Rogers, Ms. Yvonne Kilpatrick, and Mr. Ryan Smiley.

On November 7, 2024, CURENT was pleased to host a visiting team from the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), a Principal Member of the CURENT Industry Program. The group, led by Michael McAmis, Sr. Program Manager for Grid R&D Innovation and Research, was composed of TVA experts Noah Ankar, Chris Burge, Tim Smith, Gary Kobet, Ian Grant, Tim Fritch, Jonathan Sides, Tony Murphy, Tiffany Gibby, Miles Biggs, and Libby Hawthorne.

Dr. Fran Li, Director of CURENT, warmly welcomed the visitors and provided an overview of the center’s mission, vision, and ongoing projects. Following this, the TVA team presented an insightful overview of their R&D initiatives. In return, CURENT’s faculty members (Drs. Fran Li, Yilu Liu, Kai Sun, Hector Pulgar, Fred Wang, Leon Tolbert, Kevin Bai, Daniel Costinett, and Jiangbiao He) shared highlights from their latest research efforts.

The visitors and hosts engaged in a productive brainstorming session over lunch, exploring opportunities for further collaboration. The day concluded with a tour of CURENT’s cutting-edge testbeds and research facilities, where visitors had the chance to see the innovative work firsthand.

The event was supported by logistical assistance from Mr. Michael Rogers, Ms. Yvonne Kilpatrick, Mr. Ryan Smiley, and Mr. Bob Martin.

CURENT graduate student, Sebastian Martinez Lizana, received the second-place Graduate Presentation Award for his paper titled, “Application of Orthogonal Projectors in Power System Dynamics.” This research applies orthogonal projectors to simplify power system dynamics analysis. By projecting complex, high-dimensional behaviors onto lower-dimensional subspaces, this method enables clear observation of dynamics—such as electromechanical oscillations—at reduced complexity. Validated on a two-machine infinite bus system and the New England 39-bus system, the approach helps uncover specific eigenvalue-driven dynamics, providing deeper insights into stability and control.

The paper was presented at the 56th North American Power Symposium (NAPS 2024) in October on the campus of The University of Texas at El Paso. Sebastian is pictured below with the conference co-chairs, Dr. Paras Mandal (left) and Dr. Yuanni Sang (right). Dr. Hector Pulgar, Associate Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering & Computer Science at the University of Tennessee, serves as Sebastian’s advisor.

IEEE Energy Conversion and Congress Expo (ECCE) 2024 was hosted in Phoenix, AZ, Oct 19-24. CURENT has 10 Professors and Staff  (Kevin Bai, JiangBiao He, Leon Tolbert, Fred Wang, Ruirui Chen, Jingxin Wang, Shiyuan Fan, Anubrata Das, Nupur, Anwesha Mukhopadhyay) and 9 Students (Ziwei Liang, Farzad Yaghoobi Notash, Mohamed Farag, Paychuda Kritprajun, Niu Jia, Sadia Binte Sohid, Min Lin, Zihan Gao, Ching-Hsiang Yang) who participated in this conference and won multiple awards, including:

1. Best paper award, “Model Predictive Control of 5L-ANPC Inverter Fed AFPM Motor with Mitigated Common-Mode Voltage in Electric Aircraft Propulsion,” Farzad Y. Notash, Matin Vatani, JiangBiao He and Dan Ionel;
2. 3^rd place paper award for “Packaging a 100kW All-GaN-based Three-level Active Neutral Point Clamped Power Module for Electric Vehicle Motor Drives”. The article features the collaboration between CURENT and Volkswagen, co-authored by Kevin Bai, Daniel Costinett, Leon Tolbert and Fred Wang;
3. 2^nd place student demonstration award, “Magnetic and Insulation Techniques for Medium Voltage DC/DC Converters Using 10-kV SiC Devices,” by Zihan Gao from Dr. Fred Wang’s group.

In addition, Kevin Bai served as the technical program co-chair for the conference. Fred Wang was recognized for 20 years of IEEE service. CURENT also had a booth at ECCE exhibiting the research program, particularly power electronics.

Dr. Yilu Liu’s team received notification that Oak Ridge National Laboratory and The University of Tennessee are the recipients of a 2024 R&D 100 Award for their entry, InertiaMeter: Cost-Effective Real-Time Power System Inertia Monitor.  The team also received the silver medal special recognition in the Green Tech category.  Entries were received worldwide.

R&D 100 Winners for 2024 are announced

Winners unveiled for 2024 R&D 100 Special Recognition categories

Dr. Fran Li recaps CURENT 2024 Summer Strategic Planning Meeting in Seattle

CURENT held its annual summer strategic planning meeting with its industrial members during the IEEE Power and Energy Society (PES) General Meeting (GM). The meeting this year took place on July 25th at the Alder & Ash Restaurant private meeting room in Seattle, WA, during IEEE PES GM 2024. The meeting was attended by five CURENT faculty members (Fran Li, Yilu Liu, Kai Sun, Kevin Tomsovic, and Zheyu Zhang), alongside 11 industrial members representing 10 companies: Dominion Energy, Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), EnerNex, Hitachi Energy, ISO-New England, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), New York Power Authority, PingThings, and Southern Company.

The meeting commenced at 1:15 PM following a luncheon for the attendees. After a brief welcome message and updates on the center from Professor Fran Li, Professor Yilu Liu led a discussion on the Industrial Advisory Board (IAB) tasks and missions. Dr. Micah Till, from Dominion Energy, was announced as the new Chair of the IAB. Over the next two hours, faculty members shared their strategic views on future research directions and ideas, which sparked significant discussions and feedback from the industrial members. The meeting adjourned at 3:30 PM.

As previous CURENT events with industrial members, this year’s CURENT strategic planning meeting fostered a collaborative environment where academic and industry leaders exchanged valuable insights and forged stronger partnerships. The active participation and constructive dialogue are a testament to the collective commitment to advancing the future of power and energy systems. We look forward to the continued success of these partnerships and the innovative research that will shape the power industry’s future.

Dennis Pratt, Johnny Lam and Brandon Burgess from Micron Technology will present the CURENT Power and Energy Seminar on Friday, March 4 from 1:00pm – 1:50pm via ZOOM. Please join us for their talk on Micron Technology Tech! 

Time: Friday, March 4 from 1:00 PM – 1:50 PM EST

Location: Via ZOOM ,  download calendar file

Presenters: Dennis Pratt, Johnny Lam and Brandon Burgess from Micron Technology

Title: Micron Technology Tech Talk

Bios: Dennis Pretti graduated from University of Colorado Boulder in 1995 with a BSEE. He is currently working in Boise, Idaho as an SMTS of Electrical Test Device & Optical Design at Micron Technology.

Johnny Lam graduated from the University of Colorado Boulder in 2003 with a BSEE and is currently working in Longmont, Colorado as a Director of SSD Firmware at Micron Technology.

Brandon Burgess graduated from Oregon State University in 2016 with a BSCS. He is currently working in Boise, Idaho as an Engineer for Product Engineering at Micron Technology.

Watch the recorded seminar

Upcoming CURENT Power and Energy Seminars

March 11 – Jingjing Sun & Min Lin, University of Tennessee – GaN-based T-type rectifer / High insulation voltage APS

March 18 – Spring Break, no seminar

March 25 – Fei Lu – High Efficiency Solid State Circuit Breaker for MVDC System Applications

April 1 – Timothy Fritch, TVA – Solar Overview

April 8 – Le Xie, Texas A&M – An Open-access Cross-domain Approach to Analyzing the Impact of Extreme Events on the Electricity Sector: What We Learned from COVID-19 and 2021 Texas Winter Outage

April 15 – Spring Break, no class

April 22 – Agasthya Ayachit, Mercedes Benz – eDrive Platforms and Power Electronics

April 29 – Natt Praisuwanna & Pay Kritprajun, University of Tennessee – Fault detection in inverter based grids / reactive power allocation among PV inverters

May 6 – Rupy Sawhney, University of Tennessee – People-Centric Operational Excellence Model

May 10 – Joe Zhou, Kettering University – Energy Storage Systems