Power systems are going through a paradigm change. Centralized large facilities are being replaced by millions of non-synchronous renewable generators, plug-in EVs, and energy storage units. Moreover, most loads are expected to actively take part in the grid regulation, in the same way as generators do. In this lecture, the synchronized and democratized (SYNDEM) grid architecture, together with a technical route, to enable this paradigm change were presented. It was shown that the synchronization mechanism of conventional synchronous machines, which has underpinned the power systems for over 100 years, can continue playing its fundamental role in power systems. It can be adopted to control all power electronics-interfaced generators and loads to behave like virtual synchronous machines. As a result, they can all take part in the regulation of system frequency and voltage in a synchronized and democratized manner, unifying the integration and interaction of all players with the grid. It will also release the communication infrastructure from the low-level control and pave the way for achieving the autonomous operation of power systems with 100% renewables. This holistic solution would considerably enhance the stability, scalability, operability, security, reliability and resiliency of next-generation smart grids.

together with the Rector of Opole University of Technology (OUT), Dean of Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Automatic Control and Informatics OUT, Association of Polish Electrical Engineers, IEEE Poland Section and two different Society Chapters - EMC-027 and MAG-033 we were honorary patron of the 2nd IEEE Students & Young Professionals (SYP) Meeting. The SYP Meeting was held from 26th to 28th of October 2017 at Opole University of Technology, POLAND. It was organized together with IEEE Opole Student Branch and supported by industry companies: IFM ecolink, Wurth Elektronik, SymKom and Explomet. The main goal of the event was to give all participants a great networking opportunity, make them closer to industry, provide them knowledge in research and technical topics. Finally, the SYP Meeting gave young IEEE members from Poland a fresh look of the IEEE community. The event covered in three days scientific topics, academia and IEEE topics as well as industrial - practical topics.

The IEEE Poland Joint Chapter IE-013/PEL-035 of Industrial Electronics and Power Electronics Societies during event was represented by Adam Milczarek, Ph.D., Eng. - Vice-chair for PELS activities. During the SYMP 2017 we had the pleasure to host special guest: Mark Montrose – Board of Directors, IEEE EMC Society, California (USA). Moreover, during the SYPM event an “YP Recognition Program” was introduced. The goal of the new initiative is to promote the YP Affinity Group among the IEEE and non-IEEE members in Poland and demonstrate the affiliation. Each eligible member received fancy ‘3D Pin’ during official ceremony at the SYMP gala dinner.

At first, Prof. K. Gopakumar, past IES Distinguish Lecturer, presented lecture „Polygonal voltage space vectors for variable speed drive”. Next, Prof. Samir Kouro presented lecture „Opportunities, challenges and trends in photovoltaic energy conversion systems”. Both lectures has distinguished with high research level, what has caused interesting and valuable discussion and the end of each presentation.

The Poland Joint Chapter of Industrial Electronics and Power Electronics Societies in cooperation with IEEE Lublin Student Branch, Electrical Drives and Machines Department and Lublin Division of PTETiS has organized lecture of prof. K. Gopakumar entitled “Multilevel inverters for drives with minimum DC-Link power supplies”. Currently Professor Gopakumar is associated with the Department of Electronic Systems Engineering at Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore, India. He is one the most cited scientists in his field. He was awarded many prizes and honors. Among others he is Fellow of IEEE, Distinguished Lecturer-IEEE Industrial Electronics Society, ABB Chair professor 2016 -2018, Co Editor-in-Chief IEEE Transaction on Industrial Electronics, and many others. Lecture of prof. K. Gopakumar distinguished with high research level, what has caused interesting and valuable discussion and the end of presentation.

Figure: Prof. K. Gopakumar in Lublin after seminar.

Students and employees of Warsaw University of Technology had the opportunity to participate in Hands-On Training led by Božica Kovačević and Ognjen Gagrica from Typhoon HIL. Intensive 8-hour training has been prepared to allow participants to gain full operating knowledge of hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) concepts and tools, as well as to acquire skills which can be applied in everyday research and educational work. At the beginning, for all participants the 1-year license key for Virtual HIL (VHIL) simulation software has been released, what allowed them to follow the modelling process presented by Typhoon HIL engineer. The first shown model concerned the boost converter with closed-loop control, where the participants has been familiar with Typhoon software, bases of modelling and simulation as well as possibilities of Virtual HIL to observation and presentation of results in dedicated SCADA tool. When everyone known how to build and simulate model on Virtual HIL, the more advanced solutions have been studied such as simple microgrid with linear and nonlinear loads or grid connected power electronics converter. In second part of the training, the more advanced options of modelling and simulation on Virtual HIL have been presented to audience, including system architecture, Core Couplings elements and additional useful options in SCADA tool. Furthermore, during the training the advanced issues related with the power system modelling on real HIL 402 and the most advanced HIL 604 from Typhoon HIL have been presented, what has shown the full potential of HIL utilization. After the training, all participants received the certificate of participation. Now, the abilities acquired during the training as well as possibility to use obtained license keys enable them to use Typhoon Virtual HIL software in their work and study.

On 12 September 2017, IEEE Young Professionals from Poland Section have organized for the very first time IEEE YP Meet-Up. The event took place in Warsaw, at EPE’17 ECCE Europe conference and was co-organized by IEEE Power Electronics Society. The members of the IEEE Poland Joint Chapter IE-013/PEL-035 of Industrial Electronics and Power Electronics Societies took part in local technical co-organization of the event. The event gathered 180 attendees – students, young professionals, engineers and professors from about 30 countries. A lot of fun, great discussion and opportunities to expand personal and professionals networks – this is how IEEE Meet-Up looked like. The event has started at 8PM and ended at 11.30 PM, at CZIiTT (Centre for Innovation and Technology Transfer Management) building. Besides free food and different drinks (especially 8 sorts of craft beer) the Meet-Up program contained short speeches - given by special guests:

• Prof. Jacek Zurada (IEEE President-Elect)
• Prof. Vladimir Katic (PELS)
• Prof. Mariusz Malinowski (Poland Section)
• Christina DiMarino (PELS YP)
• Rafal Sliz (IEEE YP Global)

We were very satisfied with this event and we also got positive feedback from the attendees and EPE'17 conference organizers. Moreover, IEEE PELS decided to use this Meet-Up as a model for further joint events PELS+YP at next EPE conferences, so additional promotion is on the way!

The Poland Joint Chapter of Industrial Electronics and Power Electronics Societies was local co-organizer of PELS flagship conference - the EPE’17 ECCE Europe Conference - which was held in Warsaw, Poland, and took place on 11-14 September 2017. All members of EPE’17 ECCE Europe Conference Local organizing committee were members of our Chapter. Moreover, over a 90% members of our Chapter were involved in organization of EPE’17 ECCE Europe Conference as volunteers.

Also, the Poland Joint Chapter of Industrial Electronics and Power Electronics Societies have organized for the participants three industry tours the day after the conference:

• Tour 1: Power generation solutions for plasma processes. On this tour participants visited TRUMPF Hüttinger, a leading global manufacturer of power supplies for plasma based coating processes, induction heating and CO2 laser excitation. TRUMPF Hüttinger has development and production sites in Poland, Germany and the USA. The tour guided them to the plant in Zielonka n/Warsaw, a DC Competence centre of TRUMPF Hüttinger, which in order to meet the latest criteria for efficiency and quality constantly expands its premises.

  Number of participants: 32

• Tour 2: ABB ENVILINE™ DC wayside Energy Storage System – the first European Energy Storage System in Subways & Power Electronics and Applications Research laboratories of the Warsaw University of Technology. On this tour parcicipants visited the ABB ENVILINE™ Energy Storage System, the first European Energy Storage System in Subways and the largest of its kind in the world) and the Power Electronics and Applications Research laboratories of the Warsaw University of Technology.

  Number of participants: 42

• Tour 3: Extraordinary sightseeing tour of Warsaw. On this tour parcicipants visited most important and characteristic places of Warsaw. They have seen Łazienki Park & Palace on the Water, which includes a park (76 hectares of nature, right in the city center) and numerous historical objects, taken panoramic tour around main spots in Warsaw and finally visited The Old Town & the Royal Castle - walking down the streets of the Old and New Towns allowed them to rest from the bustle of central city life.

  Number of participants: 15

Workshop was organized and financially sponsored by IEEE-PELS (Power Electronics Society – TC 1) and took place on Sunday, September 10, 2017, a day before the EPE 2017 – ECCE Europe, which also took place in Warsaw (Poland). This enabled all participants of the workshop to combine their travel with the travel to EPE 2017 – ECCE Europe. The Workshop did not charge any participation fee – the on-site expenses was completely sponsored by TC1 from IEEE-PELS. All persons – also students- were invited to attend and to contribute to the Workshop by their experience. The Poland Joint Chapter of Industrial Electronics and Power Electronics Societies was local technical co-organizer of the Workshop. The organizing committee, apart of the Chair of the Poland Joint Chapter of Industrial Electronics and Power Electronics Societies, prof. Sebastian Stynski from Warsaw University of Technology included also prof. Ralph Kennel form Technical University of Munich and prof. Rolando Burgos from Virginia Tech.

The idea of the Workshop was enabled by prof. Ralph Kennel. Following his words:

During my industrial activities at Robert BOSCH company I learned to use interlock times between the switching off of one power semiconductor in an inverter leg before switching on the opposite one. My opinion always was, that the so-called tail current has to be vanished before switching on the opposite semiconductor. In the following time I taught all my students, that the interlock times are necessary to avoid destruction of the inverter by a so-called shoot through. Recently we supervised a Master Thesis at Technical University of Munich to find out, how far one can shorten the interlock times (to reduce the non-linearities of the inverter in the low voltage region). The surprising results of the Master Thesis showed, that it is not necessary to wait until the tail current has vanished - the opposite semiconductor can be switched on during the tail current is still flowing. We even could reduce the interlock time to 0 without destroying the inverter.

Pe decided to have an open discussion on this topic and exchange of experience. Only a few presentations have took Place:

1. Sebastian Stynski, Warsaw University of Technology: Welcome speech
2. Ralph Kennel, Technical University of Munich: Background of the Workshop
3. Guangye Si, Technical University of Munich: Report on Master Thesis “Switching of the Commutation Process During the Recombination Current of IGBT”
4. Sabin Carpiuc, MathWorks Ltd.: Simulation of shoot-through characteristics in IGBT inverters
5. Mario Pacas, University of Siegen: The use of interlock times in Industry
6. Oleg Zeiter, Fraunhofer Institute for Reliability and Microintegration IZM: Coupled Gates Zero Dead Time Driver
7. Oleg Zeiter, Fraunhofer Institute for Reliability and Microintegration IZM: Coupled Gates Zero Dead Time Driver
8. Jun Wang, Hunan University and Yan Fei Liu, Queen's University: The Shoot Through Phenomenon of MOSFET and IGBT
9. Mario Mauerer and Johann W. Kolar, ETH Zurich: Minimization of Switching Stage Non-Idealities for Ultra-Low THD Class-D Power Amplifiers
10. Toit Mouton, Stellenbosch University: Blanking Times (Interlock Times/Dead Times) in Class-D Amplifiers

and, after lunch, triggered the 3 hours long open talks. After the Workshop and short brake all participants meet for a dinner, where in a friendly atmosphere further discussions were held.