The IEEE PES Distinguished Lecturer Program (DLP) seminar was delivered by Dr Kalyan Sen, the President and CTO of Sen Engineering Solutions, Inc. and IEEE Fellow, with the topic of “SMART Power Flow Controllers – A Necessity for Future Power Grid”, on Wednesday, 25th May, 2022.

This seminar was organized by IEEE UK and Ireland Power & Energy Society Chapter and hosted by the University of Birmingham (UoB) IEEE Student Branch (who also acts as the IEEE PES student branch chapter at UoB). This event attracted around 90 registrations and 30 attendees.

To kick off this event, the host, Nan Chen, the Chair of UoB IEEE Student Branch, welcomed everyone and briefly introduced the student branch. Dr Jianing Li, the Chair of the IEEE PES UK&I Chapter, introduced the speaker, Dr Kalyan Sen to the audience.

Dr Kalyan Sen started his presentation by introducing the importance and prospect of the Impedance Regulator (IR) in Flexible Alternating Current Transmission Systems (FACTS) and the history of its research, followed by the drawbacks of the conventional inverter-based IR used as the Unified Power Flow Controller (UPFC) – component obsolescence and high cost.

A more compact and affordable “Sen Transformer (ST)” has been carried out by SEN Engineering to achieve better functionalities compared with IR and Phase Angle Regulator (PAR). Dr Kalyan Sen demonstrated that this could be used as a “SMART Power Flow Controller (SPFC)” to provide a functional requirement-based, cost-effective solution in FACTS, in the case that the needed speed of response is in seconds.

Dr Kalyan Sen emphasized that we have one billion people without electricity. With the abovementioned benefits, SPFC could make it more possible for the Smart Grid to offer access to electricity for everyone.

In the end, Dr Kalyan Sen pointed out the challenge faced by the power grid worldwide in the area of bulk power transfer and he suggested that utilities should choose a solution that meets their needs in terms of reliability, cost-effectiveness, component non-obsolescence, efficiency, portability, and interoperability.

The presentation lasted for around two hours and was followed by a 20-minute Q&A session in which Dr Kalyan Sen commented in detail on questions raised by the audience.

For more details about the biography of Dr Kalyan Sen and the abstract of this presentation, please visit the UoB IEEE Student Branch website (https://edu.ieee.org/uk-uob/).

By Nan Chen

Chair, University of Birmingham IEEE Student Branch