By harnessing the latest advances in power electronics, control, sensors, and communication, robotics are accelerating efficiency gains in our industrialized economy. From smart robots to collaborative robots, and from virtual fences to energy flexibilization, robotics disciplines play a central role in the Industry 4.0 deployment. Yet many new exciting uses for robotics have to be realized. What is the future of power electronics in robotics applications? From control algorithms to smart motor drives using latest power semiconductor technologies, power electronics will play a key role in reaching the next level era of making our world greener and our lives safer.

Every two years, PSMA publishes an updated Power Technology Roadmap (PTR). The purpose of the PSMA Power Technology Roadmap (PTR) is to present a look at power technology and trends over the next five years. This year, to get a different and longer-term look ahead, the PSMA selected universities and research institutions that are leaders in various areas of power electronics research. These universities and institutions were invited to share information about the research that their institution would be pursuing in upcoming years, as well as provide some metrics about their research program. The results of this survey will be presented. Areas of common interest will be highlighted along with unique activity. Observations will also be shared on potential gaps in coverage.

This presentation gives a review of fuel cell engines enabling zero emission transportation. Electric traction is recognized as the future of mobility and energy conservation with battery electric, fuel cell electric and hybrid combustion engines as competing platforms. The combination of advances in power conversion systems with rapid advances in vehicle control and autonomous driving, e.g. predictive GPS based route optimization, has enabled commercially-viable vehicles. A Fuel Cell is a combustion-less/static engine that generates electric power directly by extracting the electrons from hydrogen to power the future transportation. Thus, power electronics are directly involved in both power generation and propulsion of the vehicles. Power electronics utilizing SiC devices are integrated with the fuel cell engine to provide the highest power density and more than triple the overall efficiency (fuel in, electric power out) with zero tail pipe emission enabling global GHG reduction and Carbon-free economy. Power Electronics become the workhorse enabling future mobility by also enabling the balance of plant system for the fuel cell engines including air compressor, thermal management and fuel processing units.

Dr. Goodarzi is President & CEO of US Hybrid and Chairman of Magmotor Technologies. With over 39 years of EV and HEV experience, he currently directs Technology and Product Development at US Hybrid with a focus on fuel cell electric, hybrid electric powertrain design and manufacturing for medium and heavy duty commercial and military vehicles, as well as development and production of the integrated Fuel Cell engines system for medium and heavy duty vehicles after US Hybrid acquired the UTC Power, PEM Transportation division. Dr. Goodarzi holds doctoral and master’s degrees from University of Missouri, Columbia in Power Electronics and a bachelor’s degree from Cal State Sacramento in Power Systems, registered Professional Engineer since 1985 with noted articles, several patents and has received various professional awards. Formerly, Dr. Goodarzi held the positions of Senior Scientist at Hughes Aircraft Company and Technical Director of General Motor’s EV1 program.

The space business shows a convergence of all factors and signs toward a major disruption. The market is moving towards a much more dynamic environment with new players, strong private investors and new business models, which answer the demand for a hyper connected world and for data-driven economies. These impose in the industry a tremendous pressure for shorter time to market and significant price reduction while increasing the performances of the electronics. On top of that, there is a new hype for space exploration with a clear need for higher power and higher efficiencies to drive the electrical propulsion systems. The answer from Airbus Space Electronics includes the use of new technologies like GaN, the implementation of digital control for smart power management, the use of COTs (Commercial Off the Shelf) EEE components and the digitalization & automation of the development process.

Fernando Gomez-Carpintero is currently the Head of Power Engineering at Airbus Spacecraft Electronics. Before that, he served as Head of Primary power engineering @ Airbus DS Crisa, where he worked as power electronics engineer in the development of power units for space systems. He graduated in electrical engineering from the Polytechnic University of Madrid. He joined Airbus in 2006 as a design engineer for DC/DC converters in the space electronics group. One of his first tasks was the development of the power conditioning unit for European Space Agency (ESA) mission Bepi Colombo, which was recently launched and it is now on its way to Mercury. Since then, he and his team have developed power units for a wide range of space applications, from the challenging ESA missions like Juice (Jupiter’s moons exploration) or Solar Orbiter (Sun exploration), to units for commercial application both in low and geostationary orbits, including units for the new space / mega constellation program, electronics for launchers and power units for space manned missions. He is involved also in the R&D activities of the group, in particular with the use of GaN and digital control in the space application. Since January 2019 he is leading the power electronics engineering team for the Spacecraft Electronics division of Airbus Defence&Space. 

Energy storage is now emerging as an essential electric utility resource to effectively enable higher penetration levels of variable renewable generation resources. In California, in response to RPS mandates for increased renewable penetration, Assembly Bill 2514, in conjunction with resulting California Public Utilities Commission rulings, has called for 1.3 GW of flexible energy storage to be incorporated into the energy mix by California utilities by 2024. Similar actions have been enacted, or are in process, in other U.S. states, and worldwide. The talk will review the energy storage landscape, in terms of opportunity, established and emerging storage technologies, and commercial progress. The talk will also focus on the speaker’s interests in advancing flywheel energy storage to meet utility scale challenges. In short, a flywheel functions as a battery, with kinetic energy storage replacing conventional electrochemical processes. Based on numerous implementations and products released during the past 20-30 years, there has been a general belief in the power systems community that flywheels are only suited to short term applications, for example in frequency regulation, grid stability enhancement, voltage support, and in UPS and transit system applications. This is not the case, and the talk will outline how flywheels can be economically designed to meet multihour energy shifting applications, that are essential for provision of capacity, and extended integration of variable renewable generation. Some details on product and project development at grid scale energy storage start-up Amber Kinetics will be discussed.

Seth R. Sanders is Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences at the University of California, Berkeley, and co-founder and Chief Scientist at Amber Kinetics, a technology developer and manufacturer of utility scale flywheel energy storage systems. At Amber Kinetics, Dr. Sanders leads architecture, design, and development of the company’s core technology. He received S.B. degrees (1981) in Electrical Engineering and Physics, and the S.M. (1985) and Ph.D. (1989) degrees in Electrical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge. Following an early experience as a Design Engineer at the Honeywell Test Instruments Division in 1981-83, he joined the UC Berkeley faculty in 1989. His technical interests are in electrical energy and power conversion systems. At UC Berkeley, Dr. Sanders is presently or has recently been active in supervising research projects in the areas of flywheel energy storage, high frequency integrated power conversion circuits, IC designs for power conversion applications, electric machine design, and renewable energy systems. During the 1992-1993 academic year, he was on industrial leave with National Semiconductor, Santa Clara, CA. Dr. Sanders received the NSF Young Investigator Award and multiple Best Paper Awards from the IEEE Power Electronics and the IEEE Industry Applications Societies. He has served as Chair of the IEEE PELS Technical Committee on Computers in Power Electronics, Chair of the IEEE PELS Technical Committee on Power Conversion Components and Systems, and as Member-At-Large of the IEEE PELS Adcom. He is an IEEE Fellow, a Distinguished Lecturer of the IEEE PELS and IAS societies, and recipient of the IEEE PELS Modeling and Control Technical Achievement Award.