Abstract

The goal to decarbonise the energy production and use especially in the transportation sector is challenging the modern power system. Power electronics is now playing a different role respect to 20 years ago, taking directly responsibility for the electric grid, eventually evolving towards an electronic grid. Power converters will play a grid-forming role being not only in charge of adjusting voltage level and create different AC and DC supply but also to control generation, loads and power flow among them. The Smart Transformer, which is a fundamental node of the future electronic grid, is now in the process to be standardized as for IEEE and CIGRE initiatives.  On the other hand the energy management functionality of power-electronic-based devices as the Smart Transformer needs communication to get information from sensors and send command to actuators and better manage the future dynamical reconfigurable meshed and hybrid grid and its protection. Power electronic can also provide communication functionalities embedding data directly in the Pulse Width Modulation also thanks to Wide Band Gap devices which allows higher switching frequency still with limited losses. This will open a new era for networked systems experiencing hyper-connectivity at different levels but still using the same device, the power electronics converter, where the conversion architecture and the Pulse Width Modulation are now re-thinked in a new and exciting perspective bridging two different realms of knowledge: power conversion and communication.

Short biography

Marco Liserre received the MSc and PhD degree in Electrical Engineering from the Bari Polytechnic, respectively in 1998 and 2002. He has been Associate Professor at Bari Polytechnic and from 2012 Professor in reliable power electronics at Aalborg University (Denmark). From 2013 he is Full Professor and he holds the Chair of Power Electronics at Kiel University (Germany). At Kiel University he is leading a team of 25 researchers with a 2 Million Euro annual budget through third-party funded projects, with a Power Electronics Laboratory, a Medium Voltage Laboratory and a Laboratory on Batteries and Energy Conversion, which is one of the very few worldwide interdisciplinary laboratories born as cooperation between material science and power electronics.  He has been leading in the last 10 years’ third-party projects for more than 25 Million Euro having responsibility role, among the other, within the strategic governmental 10 years’ initiative “Copernicus” in Germany for the Energy Change towards 80 % renewable based energy society and in two priority programs of the German research Foundation DFG. He is leading the research group “Electronic Energy Systems” at Fraunhofer ISIT, which will employ 20 researchers. In Fraunhofer ISIT, one of the leading microelectronics institute in Germany, he is also Deputy Director.

Notably he has been awarded in 2013 with an ERC Consolidator Grant (European Excellence Grants) for the project “The Highly Efficient And Reliable smart Transformer (HEART), a new Heart for the Electric Distribution System”. To this project did follow an ERC Proof-of-Concept Grant, and an European Innovation Council (EIC) – Transition Grant. On this subject he is leading by CIGRE and IEEE two initiatives which will lead to standardization of Smart Transformer as well as a visionary Technical Committee on Electronic Grid System.  

He has published more than 600 technical papers (1/3 of them in international peer-reviewed journals) and a book. These works have received 50.000 citations. Marco Liserre has been listed in ISI Thomson report “The world’s most influential scientific minds” from 2014 to 2021.

He is fellow of IEEE (achieved at the age of 38) and member of IAS, PELS, PES and IES. He has been serving all these societies in different capacities, being AdCom member of two of them. Among the others roles, including several Journal Editor positions, grounder of a new Magazine and Vice-President, he has been co-chairmen of ISIE 2010 and CPE-POWERENG 2019 of IES, PEDG 2022 of PELS, eGrid 2021 of PELS and PES and he will be chairman of Powertech 2025 of PES.

He has received 4 IEEE awards for journal publications and the following awards: the IES 2009 Early Career Award, the IES 2011 Anthony J. Hornfeck Service Award, the 2014 Dr. Bimal Bose Energy Systems Award, the 2017 IEEE PELS Sustainable Energy Systems Technical Achievement Award the 2018 IEEE-IES Mittelmann Achievement Award, which is the highest award of the IEEE-IES and the Istvan Nagy 2022 Award (EPE-PEMC Council).