Biography:  Professor Chan leads hydrogen and fuel cell research at Energy Research Institute in Nanyang Technological University (ERI@N). He is currently the Director of China-Singapore International Joint Research Institute in Guangzhou Knowledge City, China. Prof Chan obtained his PhD from Imperial College London. He is a Professor in the School of MAE and Cheng Tsang Man Chair Pro fessor in Energy. He is a Fellow of Academy of Engineering, Singapore and a Fellow of ASEAN Academy of Engineering and Technology. He has served as a non-executive director of Maz Energy between 2014 and 2022 and spun out Xin Xiang (Guangzhou) Hydrogen Technologies in 2018. He also served as the Technology and Technical Advisor to Sydrogen Energy, a local fuel cell company. His research has gained him several recognitions, which include George-Stephenson Medal from UK IMechE in 2000, Outstanding Scientific Achievement Award from International Association of Hydrogen Energy, USA in 2007, “World’s Most Influential Scientific Minds” award from Thomson Reuters in 2014, Nanyang Award (Research Excellence) in 2014, Nanyang Award (Innovation and Entrepreneurship) in 2017, “Star of Innovation Talent” in 2018 from Guangzhou Government, and President's Chair in Energy between 2018 and 2023. He is the recipient of two National Day Awards in 2017 and 2018. He is the editorial board member of Fuel Cells, Journal of Power Technologies, Energy Conversion and Management and International Journal of Energy Research. Prof Chan has been teaching Thermodynamics course since 1991 and awarded “Teacher-of-the-Year” in 2000. Prof Chan has published >330 refereed journal papers with a total citation count of more than 17,000 and h-index of 67. Prof. Chan is an ardent hydrogen economy advocate for over 20 years and he was the organizer/conference chair of the 1st World Hydrogen Technologies Convention (WHTC) held in Singapore in 2005.

Title: Hydrogen as an Energy Vector
Abstract: Hydrogen has emerged as a promising energy vector with the potential to revolutionize the global energy landscape. As the most abundant element in the universe, hydrogen possesses unique qualities that make it a clean and versatile energy carrier. When used in fuel cells, hydrogen can efficiently generate electricity with water as the only byproduct, eliminating harmful emissions. Moreover, it can store excess energy from renewable sources, addressing the intermittent nature of wind and solar power. Hydrogen also holds promise in decarbonizing sectors like transportation, industry, and heating. However, challenges such as production, storage, and distribution infrastructure must be overcome to fully unlock hydrogen's potential as a sustainable energy vector. This presentation will begin with stating the facts associated to renewable energy and the issues related to energy storage and off-the-grid application. These issues are further complicated when addressing energy trilemma - energy security, energy equity and environmental sustainability. Hydrogen Economy is hence emerged strongly as a vision not only to decarbonize the global economy but offering energy security solution. However, hydrogen is very costly at the moment, but it is expected that the cost will drop significantly when the production is at scale. In a renewable energy scarce country like Singapore, the production of hydrogen using renewable energy is limited, while importing hydrogen from overseas is not cost effective presently. Currently, steam methane reforming (SMR) is one the most popular and cost-effective hydrogen production technologies globally. However, the process emits significant amount of CO2 that go against the carbon reduction intent. Carbon Capture and Sequestration (CCS) is not always implementable in countries such a Singapore due to its geographical constraint. The alternative is to split methane (or natural gas) into hydrogen and solid carbon, producing no or negligible CO2. The splitting process is either by direct thermal decomposition of methane or by catalytic decomposition of methane (CMD). It is believed that CMD may be a solution for country like Singapore to weather through the energy transition period.

Prof. Gianfranco Chicco, Politecnico di Torino, Italy IEEE Fellow Editor-in-Chief of Sustainable Energy Grids and Networks Editor of IEEE Open Access Journal of Power and Energy

Biography:  Gianfranco Chicco holds a Ph.D. in Electrotechnics Engineering and is a Full Professor of Electrical Energy Systems at Politecnico di Torino (POLITO), Italy. He is a Fellow of the IEEE and the Chair of the IEEE Italy Section (2023-2024). He received the title of Doctor Honoris Causa from the Universities Politehnica of Bucharest and Technical University “Gheorghe Asachi” of Iasi (Romania) in 2017 and 2018, respectively.
He is the Scientific Responsible of the research group on Power and Energy Systems at POLITO, and the Responsible of the Torino unit of the Italian Consortium ENSIEL.
He is the Editor-in-Chief of Sustainable Energy Grids and Networks, a Subject Editor of Energy, and an Editor of IEEE Open Access Journal of Power and Energy, IET Renewable Power Generation, and Energies (MDPI).
He was the Conference Chair of WESC 2006, IEEE ISGT Europe 2017, UPEC 2020, and IEEE Eurocon 2023. Within POLITO, he participated in the European projects FP7 DIGENAS, FP7 SiNGULAR, H2020 FLEXMETER, H2020 PLANET, H2020 STORE&GO, Erasmus+ EU-MONG, and Erasmus+ THREE-LANKA. Within ENSIEL, he was the Scientific Coordinator for the European project H2020 MIGRATE, and participated in the European projects FP7 eHighway2050 and H2020 OSMOSE.
His research activities include Power System Analysis, Distribution System Analysis and Optimization, Electrical Load Management, Energy Efficiency and Environmental Impact of Multi-Energy Systems, Data Analytics, Artificial Intelligence Applications to Power and Energy Systems, Renewable Energy Sources and Distributed Generation, and Power Quality.
His International scientific production includes one book, five book chapters, over 100 journal publications, and over 150 publications in conference proceedings.

Title: Optimal Reconfiguration of Large-scale Distribution Systems: Challenges and Solutions
Abstract: The Medium Voltage electrical distribution systems have a weakly-meshed structure and are operated with a radial structure to simplify the protection schemes. Different configurations can be obtained by opening different sets of branches, provided that the network remains radial. The number of possible radial structures that can be obtained from a given weakly-meshed structure can be computed exactly. However, for large-scale systems this number is so high that there is no way to form all the corresponding radial networks in a tractable computation time. Finding the optimal radial configuration for a given objective (or multi-objective) function is then an objective that cannot be guaranteed in a global way. The available solutions are found by using deterministic or meta-heuristic solvers, both based on the branch-exchange mechanism that allows conducting the computational procedure by forming only radial configurations. The challenges to find out suitable solvers can be assisted by the definition of suitable comparison metrics. Many literature references consider only the best, average and worst solution found. However, these metrics are not sufficiently general to represent the global properties of the solutions found. An approach that uses a global metric based on the concept of first-order stochastic dominance is more appropriate to compare a statistically significant number of solutions executed for different solvers. The presentation follows the conceptual line indicated below, providing some examples taken from test systems and real distribution networks.

 

 

 

2023 Invited Speakers

 

Prof. Mahdi Jalili, RMIT University, Australia

Biography:  Mahdi Jalili received his PhD in Computer and Communication Sciences from EPFL, Lausanne, Switzerland. He was Australian Research Council DECRA Fellow and RMIT VC Research Fellow. He is currently a Professor of AI and Electrical Engineering at RMIT and also the director of RMIT EV Living Lab. He leads Intelligent Informatics and Control research group, a dynamic research group with six academic staff, 12 research fellow and more than 40 PhD students. His main research areas include complex networks, complex dynamical systems, machine learning and its applications in sustainable energy systems. He has been the organising committee and technical program committee member of many international conferences. He is associate editor or guest editor of several journals including Scientific Reports, Complexity, Frontiers of Physics, IET Smart Grid and Asian Journal of Control.

 

Prof. Victoria Laura Barrio, University of the Basque Country (UPV-EHU), Spain

Biography:  Industrial engineer and doctorate at the University of the Basque Country UPV/EHU in 2002, where she received her PhD. She was a Postdoctoral researcher in the Engler-Bunte-Institut at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (2003-2004). Current research fields are catalytic processes focused on advanced reaction systems for hydrogen production from renewable sources and CO2 valorisation, hydrogen storage and LCA analysis. Including development of thermal- and photo- catalytic processes for the production of high value-added products like methanol from wastes and biofuels and design of advanced reaction systems incorporating microreactors and membranes applied to the mentioned processes. Scientific Coordinator for the ongoing European project UnLOHCked and Partner of the ongoing European SherLOHCk project.

Title: H2 as Energy Vector: Transport and Storage
Abstract: Global warming, normally caused by the increasing consumption of fossil fuels, has been a huge environmental problem. Currently, the use of energy from renewable sources is proposed to be the key to mitigate the environmental problems derived from energy demand. However, these resources need of storage systems able to smooth fluctuations. Green hydrogen is considered to be a promising energy carrier due to its properties like free-CO2 combustion and high gravimetric energy density. The main challenge is related to its low energy density, as the molar volume of hydrogen at standard conditions is very large. To date, many physical and chemical hydrogen storage techniques have been investigated. They all target to increase the volumetric energy content without compromising gravimetric energy density. Conventional hydrogen storage techniques include compression and liquefaction; however, these technologies offer only limited benefits due to safety concerns: low storage density, boil-off losses, and relatively high cost. Hydrogen conversion into another chemical substance can help to overcome many of the disadvantages mentioned. From this perspective, the use of carriers with a reversible conversion and recovering the hydrogen can be a promising solution.

 

Assoc. Prof. Sohrab MIRSAEIDI, Beijing Jiaotong University, China

Biography: Sohrab Mirsaeidi received his Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineering from Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM), Malaysia in 2016. Subsequently, he furthered his Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Department of Electrical Engineering, Tsinghua University, China from 2016 to 2019. Currently, he is an Associate Professor at the School of Electrical Engineering, Beijing Jiaotong University (BJTU), China. Sohrab Mirsaeidi has published 60+ papers and 2 books in the field of Microgrids and Large-Scale Power Systems. He is a Member of the National Technical Committee of Measuring Relays and Protection Equipment Standardization of China and has been involved in several national research projects in China. He is an Editorial Board Member for several international journals and a Regular Reviewer for IEEE Transactions journals. He has also served as Chair, Keynote/Invited Speaker, and Technical Committee Member in 50+ international conferences. His main research interests include Control and Protection of Large-Scale Hybrid AC/DC Grids and Microgrids, Power System Stability, and Application of Power Electronics in Power Systems. He is a Member of IEEE, IET, CIGRE, and Chinese Society for Electrical Engineering (CSEE).

 

Assoc. Prof. Siqi Bu, Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong, China

Biography: Dr Siqi Bu received his BEng (Hons) in Electrical Engineering, BSc (Hons) in Management of Industry and Business in 2006 and MEng (Distinction) in Electrical Engineering in 2008 all from Southeast University. He then obtained his PhD from the Queen's University of Belfast, U.K., in 2012, where he continued his postdoctoral research work in the same department before entering industry.
Then he worked with National Grid UK as an experienced UK National Transmission System Planner and Operator. He joined Department of Electrical Engineering at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU), Kowloon, Hong Kong, as an Assistant Professor in 2016 and then was promoted to tenured Associate Professor in 2020 via a fast track. He is also a Chartered Engineer with UK Royal Engineering Council, U.K..
He is the Associate Head, Departmental Leader of Electrical Engineering Degree Program, Impact and Publicity Committee, Learning and Teaching Committee and International Student Promotion, Departmental Alumni Liaison Officer, and also the Member of Faculty Board. He is the Founder Director of Renewable Integration and Smartgrid Application (RISA) research lab and the Research Program Leader of Center for Advances in Reliability and Safety (CAiRS) at PolyU.

 

Prof. Zhilei Yao, Shanghai Maritime University, China

Biography: Zhilei Yao (Senior Member, IEEE) was born in Jiangsu, China. He received the B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Nanjing, China, in 2003, 2006, and 2012, respectively.
From 2003 to 2019, he was with Yancheng Institute of Technology. In 2020, he joined the Shanghai Maritime University, Shanghai, China, where he is currently a professor. He was a visiting scholar with the Department of Energy Technology, Aalborg University, from November 2014 to 2015. He holds more than 50 patents, and has authored or coauthored more than 100 technical papers. His current research interests include dc–dc converters, inverters, and distributed power generation.
Dr. Yao is an Associate Editor of the IEEE ACCESS. He has been honored as an IEEE Access Outstanding Associate Editor for 2021. In addition, he has served as a reviewer for IEEE Transactions on Power Electronics, IEEE Transactions on Industrial Electronics, IEEE Transactions on Industry Applications, IEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics, IEEE Journal of Emerging and Selected Topics in Power Electronics, IET Renewable Power Generation, IEEE APEC, IEEE ECCE and IEEE IPEMC Since 2010.

 

Assoc. Prof. Farhad Shahnia, Murdoch University, Australia

Biography: A/Professor Farhad Shahnia received his PhD in Electrical Engineering from Queensland University of Technology (QUT), Brisbane, in 2012. He is currently an A/Professor at Murdoch University. Before that, he was a Lecturer at Curtin University (2012-15), a research scholar at QUT (2008-11), and an R&D engineer at the Eastern Azarbayjan Electric Power Distribution Company, Iran (2005-08). He is currently a Fellow member of Engineers Australia, Senior Member of IEEE, and member of the Australasian Association for Engineering Education.
Farhad’s research falls under Distribution networks, Microgrid and Smart grid concepts. He has authored one book and 11 book chapters and 100+ peer-reviewed scholarly articles in international conferences and journals, as well as being an editor of 6 books.
Farhad has won 5 Best Paper Awards in various conferences and has also received the IET Premium Award for the Best Paper published in the IET Generation, Transmission & Distribution journal in 2015. One of his articles was listed under the top-25 most cited articles in the Electric Power System Research Journal in 2015 while one of his 2015 journal articles has been listed under the top-5 most read articles of the Australian Journal of Electrical and Electronics Engineering. He was the recipient of the Postgraduate Research Supervisor Award from Curtin University in 2015 and the Australia-China Young Scientist Exchange Award from the Australian Academy of Technology and Engineering in 2016.
Farhad is currently a Subject Editor, Deputy Subject Editor, and Associate Editor of several journals including IEEE Access, IET Generation, Transmission & Distribution, IET Renewable Power Generation, IET Smart Grid, IET Energy Conversion and Economics, and International Transaction on Electrical Energy Systems and has served 35+ conferences in various roles such as General, Technical, Program, Publication, Publicity, Award, Sponsorship, and Special Session Chairs.
Farhad has led the IEEE Western Australia Section as the 2020-2021 Chair, and was the 2019 Founding Chair of the IEEE Western Australia Industrial Electronics Society (IES) Chapter. He is currently the 2021-2022 Secretary of the IES’s Technical Committees on Smart Grids.

Prof. Chunxue Wen, North China University of Technology, China

Biography:  Wen Chunxue, male, PhD, professor, master's supervisor, IEEE member, member of the DC Power Supply Special Committee of the China Power Supply Association, member of the Energy Storage Special Committee of the Beijing Advanced Carbon Materials Promotion Association, member of the China University New Energy Alliance, and member of the Comprehensive System Special Committee of the China Renewable Energy Society. The main research directions include: distributed energy storage operation and control; Energy storage converter control technology; Micro grid and smart grid operation control; Improving the resilience of active distribution networks, etc. Dr. Wen has published over twenty academic papers including SCI/EI searches, obtained five authorized invention patents, published three translated works, and jointly published one high-quality textbook in Beijing.
As the project leader, Dr. Wen has presided over a sub project of the National Key R&D Plan, a project of the Beijing Natural Science Foundation, three projects of the Beijing Municipal Education/Science Commission, and more than ten projects entrusted by enterprises and institutions. He has won a second prize of science and technology in Anhui Province, a second prize of innovation achievement award of China's industry university research cooperation, a second prize of science and technology progress award of China Power Construction Enterprise Association, and a second prize of invention and entrepreneurship award of List of Chinese inventions Association.

Prof. Yousef Farhaoui, Moulay Ismail University, Morocco

Biography:  Prof. Dr. Yousef FARHAOUI, is a Professor at Moulay Ismail University, Faculty of sciences and Techniques, Morocco. Chair of IDMS Team, Director of STI laboratory. Local Publishing and Research Coordinator, Cambridge International Academics in United Kingdom. He obtained his Ph.D. degree in Computer Security from Ibn Zohr University of Science. His research interests include learning, e-learning, computer security, big data analytics, and business intelligence. Farhaoui has three books in computer science. He is a coordinator and member of the organizing committee and also a member of the scientific committee of several international congresses, and is a member of various international associations. He has authored 7 Book and many Book Chapters with Reputed Publishers such as Springer and IGI. He is served as a Reviewer for IEEE, IET, Springer, Inderscience and Elsevier Journals. He is also the Guest Editor of many Journals with Wiley, Springer, Inderscience, etc. He has been the General Chair, Session Chair, and Panelist in Several Conferences. He is Senior Member of IEEE, IET, ACM and EAI Research Group.

 

Asst. Prof. Xu Xu, Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University, China

Biography:  Dr Xu Xu received the B.Eng. degree in electrical engineering and automation from the Qingdao University of Technology, Qingdao, China, in 2015, and the M.Sc. and the Ph.D degrees, both in electrical engineering, from The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong SAR, in 2016 and 2019, respectively. Prior to joining XJTLU, he was a Research Fellow in Rolls-Royce@NTU Corporate Laboratory with the School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. In 2019, he joined as a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Electrical Engineering, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong SAR. In 2020, he was a Research Assistant I in the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR. He participated in several research projects funded by the Hong Kong SAR government and the Singapore government. Some of his research outcomes have been practically applied by power utilities in Hong Kong SAR and Singapore, and won the best conference paper awarded by IEEE PES. As an IEEE member, he served as a session chair and a committee member at several IEEE conferences. In recent years, he has published more than 20 SCI journal/EI conference papers. He regularly serves as the reviewer for some SCI journals and EI conferences. His research interests include power system optimization, renewable energy generation and integration, energy sharing and trading, and the application of artificial intelligence in smart grids.

 

Assoc. Prof. Nofri Yenita Dahlan, Universiti Teknologi MARA (UiTM), Malaysia

Biography:  Ir. Dr. Nofri Yenita Dahlan is an Associate Professor in the School of Electrical Engineering, Universiti Teknologi MARA (UiTM) Shah Alam, Malaysia. Currently, she serves as the Director of UiTM Solar Research Institute (SRI). She received Electrical Engineering Degree, B. Eng (Hons) from Universiti Tenaga National (UNITEN) Malaysia in 2001, M.Sc. degree from the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology (UMIST), UK in 2003, and Ph.D. degree from the University of Manchester, UK, in 2011.
Her research interest has focused on power generation investment, energy economics and policy, electricity market, energy modelling, renewable energy, energy savings and efficiency. In recognition for her achievements in the fields, she has been awarded a Certified Measurement and Verification Professional (CMVP) in 2014 from the Efficiency Valuation Organization (EVO) and Association of Energy Engineers (AEE), U.S. Under these capacities she has trained more than 400 measurement and verification (M&V) practitioners and involved in M&V audit for more than 30 Energy Performance Contracts (EPC) and green technology projects in Malaysia. She also served as policy consultant for United Nation Industrial Development Organisation (UNIDO) Malaysia Energy Efficiency and Solar Thermal Application (MAEESTA) Project. In this exercise, she developed a Policy Brief titled Solar Thermal Deployment Strategy for Malaysian Industries and led the development of three energy efficiency and conservation guidelines for Energy Commission Malaysia. In rural electrification related project, she has partnered with researchers from the United Kingdom to conduct a research project titled “Facilitating a Just, Fair, and Affordable Energy Transition in the Asia-Pacific” for addressing energy justice dimensions of rural electrification, techno-economic analysis of different business models and policy implications of these combined findings through stakeholder workshops. In 2021, she has been featured as a Women Leaders in Energy and Environment by Young Southeast Asia Leaders Initiative (YSEALI) Women’s Leadership Academy Alumni Network.

 

Asst. Prof. Yun Yang, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore

Biography:  Yang Yun received B.Sc. degree in Electrical Engineering from Wuhan University in 2012 and Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Hong Kong in 2017. He was a Research Assistant Professor at the Department of Electrical Engineering, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University. He is currently an Assistant Professor at the School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, and an Honorary Research Assistant Professor at the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, The University of Hong Kong.