On the morning of April 11, Professor Bikash Pal, Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering (UK), Distinguished Visiting Professor at Tsinghua University, and Professor at Imperial College London, visited the Department of Electrical Engineering and Applied Electronics (EEA) and delivered a special academic lecture titled “Optimal Voltage Ride-Through of IBR-Dominated Power Systems.” The lecture was chaired by Associate Director Sun Kai of the department, and more than 20 faculty members and students, including Department Dean Kang Chongqing, attended the session.

In his report, Professor Pal elaborated on the optimal control theory of inverters for dynamic voltage support and voltage unbalance suppression. He demonstrated how convex optimization methods can ensure globally optimal voltage support response of inverters under multiple disturbances, providing a powerful tool for voltage stability in weak grid environments. His further research extended to three-phase unbalance issues, proposing a distributed control framework that effectively improves voltage quality and system reliability. Additionally, Professor Pal introduced the latest model-free inverter control methods, which use data-driven strategies to achieve dynamic voltage regulation without requiring an accurate grid model. These studies offer valuable theoretical references and exploration directions for the supportive role of inverters in power systems with high proportions of renewable energy.

After the lecture, Kang Chongqing, on behalf of the department, presented a commemorative gift to Professor Pal, expressing sincere gratitude for his long-term support of the department’s scientific research and talent cultivation.

Before the lecture, Kang Chongqing and Sun Kai accompanied Professor Pal and his delegation on a visit to the department’s history exhibition room. Professor Pal showed great enthusiasm learning about the department’s more than 90 years of development and highly praised its recent achievements.

Speaker Introduction:

Professor Bikash Pal is currently a professor at the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Imperial College London. He is a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering (UK) and an IEEE Fellow. His main research areas include power system dynamic stability and control, applications of artificial intelligence in grid control, and power system state estimation. He has led research projects funded by the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), UK Power Networks, General Electric, ABB, Siemens, and other institutions and enterprises in the power systems field.

Professor Pal has also led international collaborative research through consortia such as the UK-China Sustainable Energy Network Innovation Partnership (comprising six universities), the UK-India Smart Grid and Storage Innovation Partnership (eight universities), and the UK-China Smart Grid and Control Innovation Partnership (six universities). He serves as a consultant to organizations including the United Nations, General Electric, Alstom, China State Grid, and UK Power Networks.

He has published over 140 academic papers in IEEE and IET journals, co-authored four academic books, and contributed to two award-winning IEEE working group reports. Professor Pal has held positions including Chair of the IEEE Power & Energy Society (PES) Publications Committee, Editor-in-Chief of IEEE Transactions on Sustainable Energy, and editor of Elsevier’s sustainable energy journal series.

In recognition of his outstanding contributions and significant influence in the field of power system stability control, Professor Pal has been elected Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering, IEEE Fellow, and Foreign Fellow of the Chinese Society for Electrical Engineering. In September 2024, he was appointed Distinguished Visiting Professor at Tsinghua University.