Dr. Alex Huang, Progress Energy Distinguished Professor of Electrical Engineering at NC State University, will give a talk entitled “Wide Bandgap Power Semiconductor Devices, Future Electric Power Delivery System and Energy Internet” on Thursday, May 12th. 26th at 11 am in MHK 435. Please make plans to see this informative speaker. 
Who: Dr. Alex Huang
What: Seminar
When: Thursday, May 12th
Time: 11:00 am EST
Where: MHK 435
Title: Wide Bandgap Power Semiconductor Devices, Future Electric Power Delivery System and Energy Internet
Abstract: Dr. Huang proposed the vision of the Energy Internet in 2007 and the concept was inspired by the ever-growing electronic commerce (E-commerce) industry (e.g., ebay, Amazon) that provides consumer-to-consumer and business-to-consumer sales services via “Information Internet”. In a similar paradigm shift, the highly distributed and scalable electricity consumers/prosumers have to play a more active role that the centralized bulk power plants are currently serving. The Energy Internet is therefore a complex physical-cyber-social-business system involving cyber-systems (e.g., information networks), physical-systems (e.g., electric grid), and social-systems (e.g., business model, policy, human behavior). There are many critical technologies that must be developed. One of the first steps is to transform the electric grid infrastructure into a reliable and resilient smart grid with plug-and-play and bidirectional power flow capability. This talk will discuss the wide bandgap (WBG) power device technology and its impact on energy efficiency and on transforming the electric grid from a passive one to an actively controlled. At the heart of the future power delivery system is the WBG enabled Solid State Transformer (SST) and Fault Isolation Device (FID) technology. The talk provides a preview of a R&D journey from microelectronics to power electronics to smart grid energy system, or from microsystem to complex large scale system, as well as the importance of multidisciplinary team oriented research.
Bio: Dr. Alex Huang received his B.Sc. degree from Zhejiang University, China in 1983 and his M.Sc. degree from Chengdu Institute of Radio Engineering, China in 1986, both in electrical engineering. He received his Ph.D. from Cambridge University, UK in 1992. From 1994 to 2004, he was a founding member and a professor of Center for Power Electronics System (an NSF ERC) at Virginia Tech. Since 2004, he has been a professor of electrical engineering at North Carolina State University and he is currently the Progress Energy Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering. He established the NSF FREEDM Systems ERC in 2008. As part of the FREEDM System concept, he developed the original concept of Energy Internet with the Solid State Transformer serving as an Energy Router. Today, FREEDM Systems ERC is one of the most successful ERCs in the USA with support from many companies. Dr. Huang is also the lead PI and visionary leader behind NCSU’s recent success in establishing the next generation wide bandgap power electronics manufacturing innovation institute.
Dr. Huang’s research areas are power semiconductor devices, power management integrated circuits, power electronics and its emerging applications such as those in future electric power delivery and management systems. A very active and productive research leader, Dr. Huang has mentored and graduated more than 70 Ph.D. and master students and has generated more than $200m external R&D funding in the last 20 years. Dr. Huang has published more than 450 papers in journals and conference proceedings, and holds 21 US patents. Dr. Huang is the inventor and developer of the ETO thyristor technology. Dr. Huang is a fellow of IEEE and the recipient of the prestigious 2003 R&D 100 award and 2011 MIT Technology Magazine awards.
