IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON SUSTAINABLE ENERGY, VOL. 2, NO.
4, OCTOBER 2011
A Control Design Approach for Three-Phase
Grid-Connected Renewable Energy Resources
S. Ali Khajehoddin, Member, IEEE, Masoud Karimi-Ghartemani, Senior Member, IEEE,
Praveen K. Jain, Fellow, IEEE, and Alireza Bakhshai, Senior Member, IEEE
Abstract—This paper presents a method to design a control
system for a three-phase voltage source converter (VSC) that
connects a renewable energy source to the utility grid through
an output -type or -type filter. The well-known /
transformation method creates coupling terms that are visible and
can readily be canceled in the -type filter. Such terms, however,
are very complicated when an filter is used. This paper,
first revisits the derivation of the decoupling control method for
an -type output filter and then, for the first time, derives the
decoupling terms for an -type filter. Having successfully
decoupled the real and reactive power loops, feedback controllers
are presented and designed to achieve desirable performance.
The proposed controller provides active damping of the
resonance mode, robustness with respect to grid frequency, and
impedance uncertainty. Moreover, a new controller is designed to
improve the startup transient of the system. The methodology used
in this paper is inspired from the feedback linearization theory
and it provides a clear design method for the nonlinear systems.
Simulation results are presented to confirm the analytical results.
Index Terms—Active damping, decoupling, grid-connection,
, renewable energy.
I. INTRODUCTION
R ENEWABLE energy resources have attracted public,
governmental, and academic attention due to the global
energy crisis. An important technical challenge is the integra-
tion of renewable resources into the existing utility grid such
that reliable power is injected without violating the grid codes
and standards.
For three-phase grid-connected inverter applications, the
system is implemented to deliver active power as well as
desired reactive power to the grid. In such systems, there are
usually two control loops, one for active and another for reac-
tive power control which are preferably decoupled from each
other. Grid-connected rectifiers use topologies similar to the
grid-connected inverter systems with the difference of power
flow direction from grid to the dc link. Usually rectifiers need
to operate at unity power factor, i.e., no reactive power should
be drawn from the grid. Therefore, control methods developed
for one can be extended to the other one.
Manuscript received October 10, 2010; revised February 21, 2011; accepted
April 17, 2011. Date of publication June 02, 2011; date of current version
September 21, 2011.
The authors are with the Department of Electrical and Computer
Engineering, Queens University, Kingston, ON, K7L 3N6, Canada
(e-mail: s.ali.khajehoddin@queensu.ca; karimig@queensu.ca; praveen.
jain@queensu.ca; alireza.bakhshai@queensu.ca).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TSTE.2011.2158457
1949-3029/$26.00 © 2011 IEEE
423
A commonly used grid-connected converter topology is
a voltage source converter (VSC) with an output -type or
-type filter. -type filters are superior in terms of filter
size and weight, however, they introduce undesirable high-fre-
quency resonances at the output current. Passive damping of
those resonances cause losses and their active damping often
requires measurement of multiple signals used in a complicated
control method.
There are two general approaches to design the control sys-
tems for three-phase grid-connected converters: in stationary
domain [1], [2] or in synchronous reference domain [3]–[6]. The
stationary frame has the advantage of avoiding coupling terms
and also the possibility of controlling harmonics but it suffers
from higher order control, more complicated design, sensitivity
of the design to the grid frequency [7], and digital implemen-
tation difficulties known for resonant controllers [8]. The great
advantage of the synchronous reference method is in mapping
the ac variables into dc quantities and thus, possibility of em-
ploying simple PI controllers. A side effect of this transforma-
tion is, however, introduction of mutual coupling terms into
equations. Conventionally, input decoupling terms are used to
decouple active and reactive power control loops and simple PI
controllers are used to close the loops. This strategy is well un-
derstood and is widely used for -type output filters [3], [4].
In an -type filter, the decoupling terms are complicated
and have not been formulated so far. Instead, the -type de-
coupling terms have been applied to -type filters for the
sake of controller design [9], [10]. This is an approximate so-
lution which can create performance and stability problems for
higher values of switching frequency to resonance frequency ra-
tios [10]. The problem has been mitigated in [10] by adding fur-
ther second-order transfer functions in the control loops. More-
over, such methods do not guarantee damping of the resonance
mode. In [5], an alternative approach to tackle the problem is
introduced based on a linear full state feedback and deadbeat
control which does not consider the nonlinear dynamics of the
dc link voltage.
The proposed approach uses a transformed set of variables
that transforms the control system into a linear system despite
the nonlinearity of the original equations. This linear system is
further decoupled into two subsystems. The two resulted linear
subsystems correspond to active and reactive power control
loops. The active power loop is also controlled by the dc link
variable that turns out to be the dc link energy rather than dc
link voltage. The final control loop includes one integrating
controller for each loop in order to achieve zero steady state
error and also to achieve robustness to system uncertainties
and disturbances. The design of such integrating controllers is
performed using standard root-locus method without resorting
424 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON SUSTAINABLE ENERGY, VOL. 2, NO. 4, OCTOBER 2011

Fig. 1. Block diagram of a typical three-phase grid-connected renewable en-

ergy system using a two-stage conversion topology.

to any trial and error. This is possible thanks to the perfect

decoupling of the two loops. Another advantage of having two
decoupled loops is minimization of undesirable transients of
reactive current caused by changes of active power and vice
versa. This, for example, can become more important when Fig. 2. Single line converter block diagram with an output -type filter (top)
a sensitive dc load is connected to the dc link of the system. or -type filter (bottom).
Moreover, active damping of the resonance mode is automati-
cally achieved by appropriate selection for the location of the
The system equations are transformed to using
closed-loop poles. Moreover, the proposed method is inher-
. Moreover, the system is trans-
ently adaptive with respect to grid frequency, a characteristic
formed to frame using transformation.
that cannot easily be achieved in other approaches. This paper
The resulted set of equations is
also introduces a method to design, formulate, and control the
startup transients of the system by using additional terms in the
control structure. Such terms are formulated and designed for (2)
both -type and -type converters.
The paper is organized as follows. The study system is in-
troduced in Section II and the problem formulation is formally where the -transformation is performed using the grid voltage
presented in Section III. The proposed technique of decoupling angle as the reference. In (2), is the grid frequency and is
and control is explained in Section IV. The startup control the grid voltage magnitude. We assume a purely sinusoidal and
is presented in Section V. Section VI presents some perfor- balanced grid voltage in this study. The power balance equation
mance evaluation results and Section VII concludes the paper. can be used to derive an equation for the dc-link voltage as
Those materials of more mathematical nature are provided in follows:
Appendix.
(3)

II. STUDY SYSTEM In (3), denotes the inverter instantaneous output power
Block diagram of a typical three-phase grid-connected re- (4)
newable energy system is shown in Fig. 1. The conversion
system may comprise of 1) a first-stage converter whose main where stands for the instantaneous power of the filter
objectives are maximum power point tracking (MPPT) and which is zero (in balanced three-phase case). Notice that internal
performing a voltage boost, 2) a VSC that converts the dc power system losses are neglected. Thus, (3) is
stored in the dc link into ac, and 3) an output filter that serves
as the interface between the inverter and the grid to attenuate (5)
switching noises. The power generated by the renewable source
is , and the current injected to the grid is while the dc link Equations (2) and (5) describe the dynamic of the system state
capacitance is and its voltage is . This structure is called variables . Since the converter uses PWM tech-
the two-stage conversion system. It is possible to remove the nique, and , where and are the
first stage and connect the renewable source directly to the dc control signals. As a result, the nonlinear state space equations
link. In such a structure, called a single-stage structure, the are
inverter performs the MPPT as well.
(6)
III. SYSTEM EQUATIONS AND PROBLEM DEFINITION

A. L-Type Output Filter where the input power is in general a nonlinear function
of the state variables. This is a third-order nonlinear multivari-
Fig. 2 (top) shows the single line block diagram of a three- able system.
phase grid-connected converter with an output -type filter. The
system equations in terms of phases , , and are B. LCL-Type Output Filter
A single line diagram of a three-phase filter connection
(1) is shown in Fig. 2 (bottom portion). The differential equations
KHAJEHODDIN et al.: CONTROL DESIGN APPROACH FOR THREE-PHASE GRID-CONNECTED RENEWABLE ENERGY RESOURCES 425

governing this system in the -frame can be written as With this control, the closed-loop will have the following
transfer function:

(7) The constants and can easily be selected to achieve a de-

sirable transient response.
The dc-link control loop can be linearized using
transformation that is the energy stored in the
dc-link. This change of coordinates can be obtained using a
full state feedback linearization technique as explained briefly
where the -transformation is performed using the grid voltage in Appendix A. However, in this case due, to simplicity of the
angle as the reference. With the definition of state-variables as -filter case, the solution is found intuitively. Using the output
, the control signals as feedback linearization technique, the dc-link control loop can
, the system of (7) is a multivariable nonlinear system be represented as
of order seven.
(9)
C. Control Objectives
This form allows decoupling and also feedback linearization of
For both converters with -type or -type output filters,
the equations by choosing
the control objectives are (i) injecting the (maximum real and
controlled reactive) powers to the grid, (ii) maintaining a pure
sinusoidal form for the injected current, and (iii) controlling the
peak inrush current at the startup stage. In the two-stage struc-
ture, the MPPT is performed by the first-stage converter and the The resulted equations will be
VSC transfers the maximum power to the grid by means of reg-
ulating the dc link voltage at a constant prespecified value. In (10)
the single-stage structure, however, the dc link voltage directly
reflects the source voltage and therefore, the dc link voltage ref- that has a transfer function .
erence is obtained from a MPPT algorithm and it is not constant To ensure zero steady state error in the presence of uncertainties,
anymore. In other words, the objective (i) can be further decom- an controller is used. The closed-loop
posed into two objectives: (i-1) regulating the dc link voltage transfer function is
to its reference value, and (i-2) controlling the flow of reactive
power. There are few challenges in the control of such systems
that are the coupling between the outputs of the system, the non-
linearities in the system equations, and grid voltage distortions.
Such challenges are much more pronounced in the -type which can have a desirable transient response provided that the
inverter. constants and are properly selected.
The control signal for the dc-link control loop is given by
IV. PROPOSED CONTROL SYSTEM

A. Proposed Method for L-Type Filters

The reactive power control loop, formulated by the second
equation in (2), can be decoupled from the dc-link control loop
by introducing a new input variable .
The equation thus becomes which is rep-
(11)
resented by the transfer function . In other
words, from the new input variable to the output reactive cur-
rent, the system is decoupled and SISO. Now, in order to en- In the above equations, the input power is a nonlinear
sure zero steady-state error in the presence of uncertainties, we time varying variable whose derivative is shown in the equa-
use a simple integrating ( ) controller for this loop as tions. In renewable energy applications, this quantity is slow
. The control signal will then be equal to varying compared to the dynamics of the controller and more-
over, if maximum power point tracking is utilized, the input
power derivative variations will be around zero. Furthermore,
the integral controller in the system will compensate any slow
(8) variations of the quantity as a disturbance signal. As a result, in
426
Fig. 3. Control system block diagram of the -type converter.
Fig. 4. Control system block diagram of the -type converter (reconfigured according to conventional approach).
Fig. 5. Root locus of the reactive current control loop for -type converter.
the final implementation of the controller the power derivative
term is not considered.
Fig. 3 shows the control system block diagram of the -type
converter using the proposed method. The main decoupling
terms are and that are well known in the liter-
ature [3]. The term also helps generating a better startup
transient. However, the proposed method is different from the
conventional method in three aspects: 1) the system is globally
linear from controllers point of view; 2) the introduction of
terms make the control system design as simple as designing an
integral controller; and 3) a feed-forward (or decoupling) term
associated with the input power is also included in the real
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON SUSTAINABLE ENERGY, VOL. 2, NO. 4, OCTOBER 2011
Fig. 6. Root locus of the dc-link energy control loop for -type converter.
power loop. This latter term is also from the same nature
of and it mainly helps avoiding large startup transients. The
integrating controller ensures compensation of these two terms
in the steady state anyway. Fig. 4 shows a reconfigured version
of Fig. 3 in a way that it resembles the conventional structure.
The design process can be done by selecting and obtaining
(or ) using the root-locus method. Figs. 5 and 6 show
the root locus of the decoupled control loops of the proposed
system. The system parameters are , mH,
, . The controller gains for the desired lo-
cation of closed-loop poles are and
.
KHAJEHODDIN et al.: CONTROL DESIGN APPROACH FOR THREE-PHASE GRID-CONNECTED RENEWABLE ENERGY RESOURCES 427

B. Proposed Method for LCL-Type Filters chosen positive number. Then, a controller as simple as
results in the following closed-loop transfer function:
Control design for the -type converter is more compli-
cated than the -type converter because the number of equa-
tions is higher and the decoupling terms are not visible. In the
approach proposed in [9], the capacitor in the output filter is
neglected and the filter is treated like a simple filter
with . To take advantage of -type filters, that yields a desirable transient response should and are
the tendency is to operate at switching frequencies and subse- properly selected. Therefore, the control law can be written as
quently sampling frequency much higher than the resonant fre-
quency [1]. However, this approximation of with , can
easily cause performance deterioration or even instability as the
switching (sampling) frequency increases beyond four times the (13)
resonant frequency [10]. Similar to the filter, the active power control loop is de-
In this paper, the decoupling terms and controller design are signed via the dc-link voltage (or energy) control. Based on the
accomplished without any approximation and as a result the sta- feedback linearization technique and with respect to (7), write
bility and performance of the system are not affected by the
switching (sampling) frequency.
The system equations using the filter are given by (7).
The reactive power is equal to , thus, can solely
be used to control the reactive power. Using the feedback lin-
earization technique (see Appendix A) one can write

(12) (14)

where and is the new input signal. Thus, from In deriving the above equations, the time derivatives of are
to the output reactive current , the system is SISO and neglected based on the justification made for the filter. Thus,
decoupled. As a result, the open-loop transfer function will be the open-loop transfer function is

A simple selection is , , that which can be simplified to

results in , where is a properly with the selection of , , ,
428 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON SUSTAINABLE ENERGY, VOL. 2, NO. 4, OCTOBER 2011

Fig. 7. Control system block diagram of the -type converter.

, where is a positive real number. Using an con-

troller , the closed-loop system will have the fol-
lowing transfer function:

The coefficients and can readily be selected to place the

poles at a desired location and to achieve desirable transient
response. Therefore, the control law can be written as

(15)

Fig. 7 shows the control system block diagram of the

-type converter using the proposed method. It can be Fig. 8. Root locus of the reactive current control loop for -type converter.
observed that the system is linear from to and from
to . The decoupling terms are shown in terms of to
that are explained above. It is worth mentioning that these
terms are linear combination of the system state variables and
there are no time derivatives involved. The design procedure
comprises selection of and obtaining (and ) using a
simple root-locus curve. Figs. 8 and 9 show the root locus of the
decoupled control loops of the proposed system. The system
parameters are , mH, H,
F, , . The controller gains
for the desired location of closed-loop poles are
and , where and are shown in Fig. 7.

V. STARTUP CONTROL
The initial startup stage of the system depends very much on
the initial conditions of the system and their interaction with the
control algorithm. This can cause harsh behavior at the startup Fig. 9. Root locus of the dc-link energy control loop for -type converter.
stage leading to system failures. In this paper, it is proposed to
include constant terms to the control loops, shown by and response to the initial conditions (with no constant input),
in Fig. 3 to smooth such behavior. This section proposes a and is the system’s response to the unity constant input
method to optimally design such constants. (with no initial conditions). By defining the following norm:
Assume that the command signal is set to zero and the linear , where is a positive semidefi-
loop dynamics is described by where the scalar nite matrix, one can conclude
is the startup smoothing term. The objective is to design . By solving
the term such that the startup behavior of the time derivative equation with respect to , results in
is controlled. The response of this system can be expressed as
, where
(16)
is the vector of initial conditions, is the system’s
KHAJEHODDIN et al.: CONTROL DESIGN APPROACH FOR THREE-PHASE GRID-CONNECTED RENEWABLE ENERGY RESOURCES 429

Fig. 11. Impact of startup controller for the -type filter.

The reactive power control loop is described by the following

equations: , , ,
, where . The initial conditions are
Fig. 10. Impact of startup controller for the -type filter. , , , . The same method
(used above) for startup control is applied and it failed to satis-
The matrix must be properly chosen to ensure the best re- factorily improve the startup control. Therefore, we generalized
sponse. The following is the summary of results for and the startup controller from a constant value to a full state feed-
filters, respectively. back as follows. The startup controller is equal to .
The gain vector is calculated using the LQR technique that
A. L-Type Filter minimizes the cost function . Selection
The reactive power loop (in the absence of a command signal) of matrix is crucial in this process. It is performed by varying
is described by , . The initial diagonal elements over some positive range and observing the
conditions are , . Therefore, the response to root-locus as well as the startup response. Fig. 11 shows the
initial conditions, i.e., , is identically zero. This results in closed-loop system response to a command of real power at
that no smoothing term is required and thus . s and a command of reactive power at s.
The dc link energy loop (in the absence of a command signal) Highly satisfactory startup transient is observed. Without this
is described by , , controller, the startup responses are very harsh and intolerable
. The initial conditions are , (not shown).
, . The expression (16) will be equal
to about for the numerical values of mH, VI. PERFORMANCE EVALUATION RESULTS
F, V, and . The matrix is a di- The proposed method is realized on a 3-kW solar photo-
agonal matrix with diagonal elements equal to 0 and 1, respec- voltaic (PV) system that is directly connected to the dc link and
tively. Fig. 10 shows that the startup controller can significantly a three-phase PWM inverter is used. The switching frequency
smooth the initial stage of the responses. In this figure, a jump is 20 kHz and the power system parameters are mH,
from 1 to 2 kW (in the input power ) is applied at s F, mH, F. The controller
and a jump from zero to 2.5 A in reactive current is applied gains are designed using the proposed technique for and
at s. As mentioned, the reactive power loop needs no -type filters. The whole system is simulated in PSIM soft-
startup control. It is also worth mentioning that the startup co- ware. Several simulation results are presented in this section to
efficient does not depend on the value of and thus, it can verify static and dynamic performances and robustness of the
be designed independent from the system operating point. proposed method.
A simulation scenario is defined as follows: the system starts
B. LCL-Type filter from zero to full irradiation level and the irradiation level drops
The dc link energy control loop is described by the following 50% at 0.05 s and the command for reactive current steps from
equations: , , , zero to 20 A at s. Fig. 12 shows the graphs of grid
, , where . The initial current components and (top portion), the dc-link voltage
conditions are , , (middle portion) and the grid currents in frame (bottom
, where . Calculating from (16) portion) for the -type filter. It is observed that the and
(for the numerical values of mH F, waveforms follow their commands closely. The dc link voltage
F, , , F) results in . is regulated to 500 V with small transients at the jump instants.
The matrix is chosen to be diagonal with elements zero except The same simulation scenario is applied to the -type
for the last one that is unity. filter and the results are shown in Fig. 13. Desirable performance
430
Fig. 12. Performance of the -type controller: d and q axes grid current (top),
dc link voltage (middle) and grid currents (bottom).
Fig. 13. Performance of the -type controller: d and q axes grid current
(top), dc link voltage, grid currents and input power (bottom).
of the controller in tracking the power commands and in regu-
lating the dc link voltage is observed. The very bottom portion
in Fig. 13 shows variations of the PV power. It confirms smooth
variations of this variable.
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON SUSTAINABLE ENERGY, VOL. 2, NO. 4, OCTOBER 2011
Fig. 14. Performance of the -type controller with 250 H uncertainty in
the grid impedance: d and q axes grid current (top), dc link voltage, grid
currents and input power (bottom).
Further, in order to verify robustness of the proposed method
with respect to different parameters, the following three sets
of simulations are performed using the same simulation sce-
nario defined above. In one simulation, an uncertainty in the
grid impedance with the value of 250 H is considered. The
simulation results are shown in Fig. 14. The control system tol-
erates this large uncertainty and only small impacts on transient
responses are observed. Another simulation considers the im-
pact of one sample delay corresponding to calculation time. The
sampling frequency is 20 kHz for this simulation. The results are
shown in Fig. 15 which confirm desirable operation of the con-
trol system with only minor impacts on the transient response
due to this delay. One advantage of the proposed control method
is that its control gains are derived in terms of the system fre-
quency. Therefore, the same control design can be used for sys-
tems with different values of frequency. Fig. 16 shows a simu-
lation where the system frequency is 80 Hz. The performance is
almost identical with that of the 60-Hz system shown in Fig. 13.
VII. CONCLUSION
For three-phase grid-connected inverter systems, control
methods are proposed 1) to accurately formulate the decou-
pling terms in and -type output filters, 2) to design its
controller gains, and 3) to control the startup transient of the
system. Advantages of the methods are 1) systematic treatment
of the problem using known control theories, 2) globally
linear control loops using appropriate change of coordinates,
3) systematic design procedure, and 4) robustness against
grid uncertainties. The proposed method obviates the need for
KHAJEHODDIN et al.: CONTROL DESIGN APPROACH FOR THREE-PHASE GRID-CONNECTED RENEWABLE ENERGY RESOURCES 431

Fig. 17. Diagram of output feedback linearization technique used in this paper.

APPENDIX A
REVIEW OF FEEDBACK LINEARIZATION TECHNIQUE
The feedback linearization technique [11], [12] is a useful
concept of nonlinear control theory. Consider a single-input
single-output (SISO) system described by the following
state-space equations:

(17)

where is the -dimensional state vector, is the control signal,

Fig. 15. Performance of the
(performed for 60 Hz) working at a system frequency of 80 Hz: d and q axes
grid current (top), dc link voltage,
-type controller with the same control design
grid currents and input power (bottom).
and is the output. The full-state feedback linearization tech-
nique involves a coordinate transformation on the state vector
such as and also on the control signals
such that the state-space equations transform to the linear rep-
resentation . For the -type and -type con-
verter, the linearizing coordinate is obtained by defining the dc
link energy as the new state variable.
The output feedback linearization is a special case of the
state feedback linearization in the sense that the new coordi-
nates consists of the output and its time-derivatives up to a
certain degree. Such a degree is called the relative degree of
the system. The time-derivative of the output signal is
, where is the Lie
derivative and is defined as . Assume that
and calculate the second derivation of with re-
spect to time as , where by definition
. We keep taking time derivatives until the
factor in front of becomes nonzero. Assume that this occurs
for , i.e., and .
Define the new input and thus the
system becomes that is a linear system of order .
This linear system has all its poles at origin and has no zero. Let

where for is an algebraic function of the

system state variables and does not use any time differentiation
of the state variables.
Then the transfer function from to is

Fig. 16. Performance of the -type controller with the same control design
(performed for 60 Hz) working at a system frequency of 80 Hz: and axes
grid current (top), dc link voltage, grid currents and input power (bottom).
and its poles can be arbitrarily placed by selecting ’s. When
the command is a constant signal, a simple integrating ( )
controller can be used to achieve desired response. Block dia-
incorporating additional filters to partially compensate for in- gram of the whole system is shown in Fig. 17. The scalar is
stabilities caused by approximate decoupling in high switching the relative degree of system and this method of control leaves
frequencies. state
432
In case a multi-input multi-output (MIMO) system is con-
cerned, the same process can be performed on every output of
the system. If the number of control inputs is equal to the number
of outputs (a square system), then it is possible to arrive at a
new system of coordinates and new set of inputs that make the
system decompose into multi-SISO systems. This is indeed the
case with grid connection of three-phase inverters as it is dis-
cussed in this paper.
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S. Ali Khajehoddin (S’04–M’10) received the B.Sc.
degree in electrical engineering and the M.Sc. degree
from Isfahan University of Technology, Iran, in 1997
and 2000, and the Ph.D. degree from Queens Univer-
sity, Kingston, ON, Canada, in 2010.
After completing his Masters, he established a
company where he developed and produced digital
meters and high-tech power system analyzers for five
years. For his doctoral research at Queens, he worked
on the design and implementation of compact and
durable micro-inverters for photovoltaic (PV) grid
connected systems. Since 2010, he has been working at SPARQ systems
Inc. toward mass-production and commercialization of micro-inverters. His
research interests include power electronics, control systems, power quality,
and renewable energy systems mainly PV systems.
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON SUSTAINABLE ENERGY, VOL. 2, NO. 4, OCTOBER 2011
Dr. Khajehoddin has filed four patents and was awarded several scholar-
ships, including the MITACS Industrial Postdoctoral Fellowship and the On-
tario Graduate Scholarship.
Masoud Karimi Ghartemani (M’01–SM’09)
received the B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees in electrical
engineering in 1993 and 1995 from Isfahan Uni-
versity of Technology, Iran. He received the Ph.D.
degree in electrical engineering from University of
Toronto in 2004.
He was a faculty member at Sharif University
of Technology from 2005 to 2008. He is currently
a researcher with the Queen’s Centre for Energy
and Power Electronics Research (ePOWER) at the
Queens University, ON, Canada. His research inter-
ests include power system stability and control, grid-integration of renewable
energy systems, and power quality.
Praveen K. Jain (S’86–M’88–SM’91–F’02) re-
ceived the B.E. degree (with honors) from the
University of Allahabad, India, and the M.A.Sc.
and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Toronto,
Canada in 1980, 1984, and 1987, respectively, all in
electrical engineering.
Currently he is a Professor and Canada Research
Chair at the Department of Electrical and Computer
Engineering, Queen’s University, Kingston, Canada,
and the Director of the Queen’s Centre for Energy
and Power Electronics Research (ePOWER). He has
received over $20M cash and $20M in-kind in external research funding to con-
duct research in the field of power electronics. He has supervised more than 75
graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, and research engineers. He has pub-
lished over 350 technical papers (including more than 90 IEEE Transactions
papers) and has over 50 patents (granted and pending). He is also a Founder of
CHiL Semiconductor in Tewksbury, MA (recently acquired by IR); and SPARQ
System in Kingston, ON, Canada. Prior to joining Queen’s, he has worked as a
Professor at Concordia University (1994–2000), a Technical Advisor at Nortel
(1990–1994), a Senior Space Power Electronics Engineer at Canadian Astro-
nautics Ltd. (1987–1990), a Design Engineer at ABB (1981), and a Production
Engineer at Crompton Greaves (1980). In addition, he has consulted with Astec,
Ballard Power, Freescale, General Electric, Intel, and Nortel.
Dr. Jain is an Associate Editor of the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER
ELECTRONICS and an Editor of International Journal of Power Electronics.
He is also a Distinguished Lecturer of IEEE Industry Applications Society.
He is a Fellow of the Engineering Institute of Canada (EIC) and the Canadian
Academy of Engineering (CAE). He is also the recipient of the 2011 IEEE
Newell Award–the highest field award in Power Electronics.
Alireza Bakhshai (M’03–SM’09) received the
B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees from the Isfahan University
of Technology, Isfahan, Iran, in 1984 and 1986,
respectively, and the Ph.D. degree from Concordia
University, Montreal, QC, Canada, in 1997.
From 1986 to 1993 and from 1998 to 2004, he
was on the faculty of the Department of Electrical
and Computer Engineering, Isfahan University of
Technology. He was a Postdoctoral Fellow from
1997 to 1998 at Concordia University. Currently, he
is with the Department of Electrical and Computer
Engineering, Queens University, Kingston, ON, Canada. His research interests
include high-power electronics, distributed generation, wind energy, smart
grid, control systems, and flexible ac transmission systems.