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Welcome to Intelligent Power Electronics at Grid Edge (IPEG) Research Laboratory. We are a research group with state-of-the-art laboratory located in Downtown Chicago at University of Illinois at Chicago. IPEG lab is equipped with various modern equipment and is growing. Our goal is to perform research in the area of power electronics dominated grids, energy storage systems, smart inverters, and cybersecurity analytics of power system. The present website includes highlights of our research outcomes, current research staff, and ongoing research projects. We are always looking for opportunities to establish a working relationship. Prospective students should apply to the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department graduate program and contact the lab director Dr. Shadmand.
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- Mr. Hassan Althuwaini (former IPEG MSc candidate) will join RWE Renewable Services starting January 2023. IPEG lab wishes him the best of luck!!
- IPEG research lab to investigate resilient, next-generation solid-state power substation, integrating cybersecurity considerations to improve adoptability funded by U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) for $2 Million (2022-2025). More information: DOE Link
- IPEG Ph.D. Student Muhammad Farooq Umar successfully defended his Ph.D. preliminary exam, December 5th, 2022. Congrats Farooq!
- Dr. Ahmad Khan (former IPEG PhD candidate) successfully defended his PhD dissertation on November 4th, 2022. Congratulations, Dr. Khan!
- Mr. Hassan Althuwaini successfully defended his MS thesis on October 21st, 2022. Congratulations, Hassan!
- Dr. Mohsen Hosseinzadehtaher (former IPEG PhD candidate) successfully defended his PhD dissertation on October 19th, 2022. Congratulations, Dr. Hosseinzadehtaher!
- IPEG research lab has three fully funded Ph.D. Open Positions starting Fall 2023 and Spring 2023. Prospective Students with strong backgrounds in power electronics, power systems, network theory, multi-agent systems, and distributed control are highly encouraged to apply. For more information please send your CV to Dr. Shadmand.
- Dr. Shadmand, IPEG research director, will be General Co-Chair of the 50th Annual Conference of the IEEE Industrial Electronics Society (IECON 2024), Chicago, IL.
- Five IPEG research associates are doing their internships in major industries across the USA over the summer of 2022: Mohsen Hosseinzadehtaher (Quanta Technology, Chicago), Amin Y. Fard (Intel, Hillsboro), Matt Baker (Sandia National Laboratory, Albuquerque), Muhammad Farooq Umar (GNW, Chicago), and Hassan Althuwaini (Invenergy, Chicago). IPEG lab wishes them the best of luck!!
- The research performed by the IPEG team is highlighted by dSPACE company. (More Information)
- Two IPEG Ph.D. students, Mohsen Hosseinzadehtaher and Amin Y. Fard defended their Ph.D. preliminary examination successfully. The IPEG lab congratulates them on their success and wishes them all the best in the rest of their Ph.D. journey.
- Three IPEG Ph.D. students are hired as interns at Sandia National Lab, Siemens, and Quanta Technology to work on cutting-edge industry projects (For more information see: IPEG News).
- IPEG Ph.D. Student Matthew Baker received the prestigious best paper award from the annual IEEE Power and Energy Conference at Illinois (PECI) 2021 for his paper co-authored by Sarthak Jain, the hardware development engineer at Amazon Lab 126, under Prof. Shadmand’s supervision. Their paper investigates the challenges and opportunities of GaN-based high-frequency power electronic interfaces to draw a clear futuristic roadmap for GaN devices within the power electronics realm. (More Information)
- IPEG Ph.D. Student Mohsen Hosseinzadehtaher received the prestigious best paper award from 2019 International IEEE Conference on Smart Grid and Renewable Energy for his paper co-authored with Ph.D. students Ahmad Khan, Matt Baker and Dr. Mohammad Shadmand. Their paper proposed novel self-healing predictive control scheme of battery energy storage system for pulse power loads in navy applications. (More Information)
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Hierarchical Model Predictive Control for Cascaded Multilevel Inverter
IPEG research lab at UIC (former PEAS research lab at KSU) developed a a hierarchical finite-set model predictive control scheme for grid-tied cascaded multilevel inverters with independent active and reactive power injection capabilities. The proposed controller has a hierarchical framework to eliminate the computationally burdensome cost function optimization and associated weight factors of the control objectives. The control formulation approach allows for multi-objective optimization with an error-tolerance framework. The control scheme achieves active and reactive power control with switching loss minimization while extracting power evenly from the independent voltage sources.
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Smart Photovoltaic Inverter with Grid Fault-ride Through Capability
IPEG research lab at UIC (former PEAS research lab at KSU) developed a single stage smart photovoltaic inverter in collaboration with Texas A&M University at Qatar. An autonomous model predictive control scheme is proposed for a single stage quasi-Z-Source grid-connected photovoltaic inverter to facilitate switching between modes of operation: maximum power point tracking (MPPT) and low voltage ride through (LVRT). The proposed smart PV inverter can respond to rapidly changing PV ambient and grid conditions and appropriately alter the current injection. The proposed controller is complemented by an observer-based MPPT algorithm with an adaptive step-size to quickly pull the PV toward and away from the MPP as necessary. The performance of the controller is verified experimentally for several grid fault and reactive power injection scenarios. The ultimate goal of this research is to develop autonomous control schemes for 1 MW medium-voltage SiC based photovoltaic cascaded multilevel inverter; this project is funded by QNRF.