Keynote presentations will be held on Tuesday, June 26

Keynote #2
Brad Lehman, Northeastern University

Smart Solar Energy for the Smart Grid
(click here to download)

This talk will introduce the recent developments on merging of traditional solar energy concepts with self-adaptation, machine learning and integrated power electronic fabrication. For example, a smart PV panel has been built that can self-heal and self-optimize to produce higher power. Specialized solar fuses can even communicate between themselves and the panels to give diagnostics for dangerous and previously undetectable faults using machine learning methods. Combined with new Maximum Power Point Tracking algorithms, the solar panels can achieve fast optimization in changing weather conditions, self-healing capabilities during faults or slowly adapt their performance during their long aging lifetimes. It is also possible to dynamically reconfigure the connections between solar panels to optimize energy yields. The new approaches lead to new controller and modeling problem statements that will also be discussed.




Prof. Brad Lehman is presently a Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Northeastern University (Boston, MA) and previously was a Hearin Hess Distinguished Assistant Professor at Mississippi State University. Dr. Lehman is Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER ELECTRONICS and is the recipient of the 2015 IEEE Power Electronics Society Modeling and Control Technical Achievement Award and a 2016 IEEE Standards Medallion. He has been listed in the inaugural edition of the book The 300 Best Professors, Princeton Review, 2012. Dr. Lehman performs research in power electronics and controls, with applications to solar energy, battery energy management systems, and reliability. Previous to becoming a professor, Brad was the head swimming and diving coach at Georgia Institute of Technology.