Graduate Research Assistant - Energy Routing Laboratory (ERL) - Dept. of EE, University of South Carolina (UofSC) - Columbia, SC 29208, USA - August 2017 - May 2022 & January 2023 - August 2023 [Full-Time]

I worked in the Energy Routing Lab (ERL) located at Swearingen Engineering Center building under the supervision of Herbert L. Ginn, Professor.

Technical Projects' Brief:

- Power Electronics Power Distribution Systems (PEPDS) for Electric Ship Zonal Networks: Development, deployment and validation of state-of-the-art power electronic converter models of modular multilevel converter (MMC), dual active bridge (DAB), synchronous and inter-linking buck converters on high-speed Xilinx SoC-FPGA-based frameworks for medium- and high-power density energy routing applications.

[Financially supported & scrutinized by the Office of Naval Research (ONR), USA]

- High-Performance Networked and Distributed Controls for Modular Power Electronic Converters: Monolithic and dispersed modeling of a power electronic building block (PEBB)-based modular converters' network associated with distributed multi-loop control interfaces for control hardware-in-the-loop (CHiL) testing through a Xilinx multi-FPGA setup.

[Financially supported & scrutinized by the Office of Naval Research (ONR), USA]

- Microgrid Building Block (MBB) Modeling and Simulations for Assessment of Marine Hydrokinetic-based Reliable and Resilient Electrification in Alaska (ORCA): Building blocks for microgrids to enhance scalability, interoperability and reliability for remote community-based or off-shore medium-voltage DC distribution systems are proposed, designed and simulated in real-time for rapid control prototyping (RCP) & HIL implementation and to ensure flexible energy transfer, cooperative controls for nominal operations and event-triggered controls for any contingencies such as faults. The HIL environment is OPAL-RT/RT-LAB with ARTEMiS/State-Space Nodal (SSN) and non-SSN solvers with both switched mode and circuit average (mathematical) models of converters.

[Financially supported & scrutinized by U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and in collaboration with National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL)]

- Real-Time Testing of Low-Voltage Microgrid Model: OPAL-RT/RT-LAB/ARTEMiS/SSN solver-based real-time implementation and validation of a hybrid microgrid model and associated switched mode power electronic converters & controls with reduced practical delays (overruns) in execution.

- Robust Combat Power and Energy Controls (RCPC):  (Currently Working) Modeling and validation of grid-forming front- and back-end power electronic converter systems (mostly average models) for both islanded and grid-supporting energy magazines (an enlarged and networked concept of energy modules), to ensure power quality throughout and to support distributed energy resources (DERs) if required.

[Financially supported & scrutinized by the Office of Naval Research (ONR), USA]