US professor honoured by Power Electronics Society

Professor Jian Sun, director the New York State Center for Future Energy Systems at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI), has been awarded the 2017 R. David Middlebrook Outstanding Achievement Award from the IEEE Power Electronics Society (PELS) — the society’s highest technical achievement award.

The award honours an individual who is judged to have accomplished outstanding contributions to the technical field of power electronics. In Sun’s case, the society recognised him for “contributions to modeling and control of power electronic converters and systems”.

An international authority in modelling and control of power electronics, Sun has performed pioneering work in the theory and application of sequence impedance methods for three-phase power electronics. His Impedance-Based Stability Theory has laid the foundation for addressing system integration issues related to renewable energy and high-voltage direct current (HVDC) transmission, including the challenges of harmonic resonance, and is transforming the technology and practice of the renewable energy industry.

The initial focus of Sun’s work was on power electronic converters and control for wind turbines, but evolved to cover large wind farms and their interactions with the power grid as the scale of wind energy in the power grid increased. He has been involved in solving a number of resonance and instability problems in large-scale wind and HVDC transmission systems in Europe and China, and is currently working with transmission system operators and utility companies to develop and implement new grid codes that incorporate new requirements based on his theory.

Sun is a fellow of the IEEE and has served as treasurer of IEEE PELS since 2013. He previously received the IEEE PELS Modeling and Control Technical Achievement Award in 2013.

Pictured: Professor Jian Sun.