Prof. Hamid Toliyat
Hamid Toliyat joined the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Texas A&M University in 1994 where he is currently Raytheon endowed professor of electrical engineering.
Dr. Toliyat has received the prestigious Nikola Tesla Field Award for “outstanding contributions to the design, analysis and control of fault-tolerant multiphase electric machines” from IEEE in 2014, the Cyrill Veinott Award in Electromechanical Energy Conversion from the IEEE Power Engineering Society in 2004, Patent and Innovation Award from Texas A&M University System Office of Technology Commercialization’s in 2020, 2018, 2016 and 2007, TEES Faculty Fellow Award in 2006, Distinguished Teaching Award in 2003, E.D. Brockett Professorship Award in 2002, Eugene Webb Faculty Fellow Award in 2000, and Texas A&M Select Young Investigator Award in 1999. He has also received the Space Act Award from NASA in 1999, and the Schlumberger Foundation Technical Awards in 2001 and 2000.
Prof. Toliyat work is highly cited by his colleagues more than 25,000 times and has an H-index of 78. Dr. Toliyat was an Editor of IEEE Transactions on Energy Conversion. He was Chair of the IEEE-IAS Industrial Power Conversion Systems Department of IEEE-IAS, and is a member of Sigma Xi. He is a fellow of the IEEE, the recipient of the 2008 Industrial Electronics Society Electric Machines Committee Second Best Paper Award as well as the recipient of the IEEE Power Engineering Society Prize Paper Awards in 1996 and 2006, and IEEE Industry Applications Society Transactions Third Prize Paper Award and Second Prize Paper Award in 2006 and 2016, respectively. His main research interests and experience include analysis and design of electrical machines, variable speed drives for traction and propulsion applications, fault diagnosis of electric machinery, and magnetic gear integrated electric machines. Prof. Toliyat has supervised more than 120 graduate students, postdocs, and research engineers. He has published around 500 technical papers, presented more than 95 invited lectures all over the world, and has 29 issued and pending US patents. He is the author of 11 books and book chapters including DSP-Based Electromechanical Motion Control, CRC Press, 2003, the co-editor of Handbook of Electric Motors - 2nd Edition, Marcel Dekker, 2004, and the co-author of Electric Machines – Modeling, Condition Monitoring, and Fault Diagnosis, CRC Press, Florida, 2013. He was the General Chair of the 2005 IEEE International Electric Machines and Drives Conference in San Antonio, Texas. Dr. Toliyat is a Professional Engineer in the State of Texas.
Keynote Speech: Multi-input Multi-output ac Link Power Converter
Abstract: In this talk, an ac-link multi-input multi-output power converter will be presented. The main energy storage component in this converter is an inductor with alternating current and voltage. The performance of this converter is similar to dc/dc buck-boost converter, except that the input and output of this converter are not limited to dc sources or dc loads and the link current is alternating. Substituting the dc-link with high-frequency ac link reduces the size and weight of the converter to a great extent. In this converter, the input and output are isolated as the input side and output side switches are never conducting simultaneously. However, if galvanic isolation is still required a high-frequency transformer can be added to the link. By adding a small capacitor to the link the switches can be turned on at zero voltage and have a soft turn off. In this case, the link frequency and consequently the switching frequency can be as high as allowed by the controller and the switches as the switching losses are negligible.
Due to the intermittent nature of solar energy, an energy storage system is usually added to the PV system to deliver reliable power and to draw the maximum power from the PV arrays. Therefore, multi-input multi-output systems are common in PV systems. Most of the currently existing topologies have two or more power stages which results in lower efficiencies. Moreover, dc electrolytic capacitors are an integral part of a two-stage system containing a dc-dc converter and an inverter. Electrolytic capacitors can cause severe reliability problems for inverters. The proposed converter is believed to overcome the above-mentioned shortcomings. It is a single-stage power conversion system with zero voltage turn on and soft turn off of the switches which results in very small switching losses, compact size, and light-weight. It does not contain any electrolytic capacitor which increases the reliability of this converter to a great extent.