Power and Energy Circuits and Systems (PECAS)

The Power and Energy Circuits and Systems Technical Committee focuses on the theory of power systems and power electronic circuits. It serves scientists and engineers working in the analysis and design of power systems and power electronic circuits and brings to the attention of the CAS Society technical issues arising in those areas. The committee serves as a bridge between the CAS Society and other IEEE societies, including the Power Engineering Society, the Power Electronics Society, the Industrial Electronics Society, and the Control Systems Society.

Vision Statement

The demand for achieving a sustainable and industrialized future is posing revolutionary, never-before-seen challenges to our way of dealing with power and energy. Generation, transmission, distribution, conversion and processing, storage, and consumption of electrical energy on large and small (micro) scales are rapidly evolving and expanding to new areas and applications that demand increasingly more stringent requirements on efficiency, reliability, quality, and integration than today’s state of the art does. The new circuit-theoretic challenges arise in terms of our understanding and ability to analyze and design the future/emerging power and energy systems. New modeling approaches and enabling computer-aided tools are required. In light of this, the members of our TC see tremendous needs as well as opportunities in Power and Energy Circuits and Systems. These research areas are rapidly evolving with the following subareas envisioned to be of particular interest to our TC:

Smart Energy Grids

Electrical power systems are facing new technical challenges due to growth in renewable generation and use of power electronic devices throughout the system, which changes the characteristics of sources and loads. Many new issues will arise with wide-spread adoption of plug-in electric vehicles. Integration of the alternative and renewable energy sources also represents new circuit-theoretic challenges in terms of the power-electronic interfaces, their topologies and control methodologies. Future Energy Grids will incorporate sensor and communications networks to facilitate distributed control of diverse resources and demand side management systems. This will further elevate the complexity and alter the power system behavior in ways that are not yet well understood. New generation of tools will be required for modeling, assessment, and control of the evolving cyber-physical energy systems.

CAS for Energy Harvesting and Interfacing of Energy Sources

Powering small sensors and devices that have limited access to external energy sources represents a big challenge in a growing number of applications. Circuits and systems that could enable harvesting energy from the surrounding environment (ambient energy, e.g. thermal, kinetic, and electromagnetic, etc.) with minimal or no local storage (ultra small batteries and supercapacitors), efficient interface and power management algorithms are of particular importance.

Energy and power Integrated Circuits (PE-ICs)

Major challenges in this area include the on chip integration, management of source energy, management of load, conditioning of energy and power, ultra low-power control, and low-power efficiency. The applications of particular interest include RF power circuits and wireless devices, mobile and remote sensors, implantable devices, etc.

 

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