Johan H. R. Enslin

A reflection of 2025 is provided while exciting opportunities with AI-powered electronic solutions with Energy Access are discussed. The Empower a Billion Lives (EBL) competition final was held at the 10th Southern Power Electronics Conference (SPEC-25) in Johannesburg, South Africa, in December 2025. EBL is PELS’ largest humanitarian initiative for Energy Access to all! Finally, all power electronics engineers are invited to stay engaged with PELS with exciting new initiatives to look forward to in 2026!

Power Hardware-In-the-Loop (PHIL) testing is a powerful approach that combines the flexibility of numerical simulations with the high fidelity of hardware tests to allow experimental validation of electrical equipment in a close-to-reality laboratory environment. This is enabled by using specially designed software and hardware that serve as an interface between the modeled environment and the equipment under test. Using PHIL for testing and validation can help significantly reduce time-to-market for novel energy solutions by both reducing the number of design/prototyping iterations, which in turn reduces the development costs, and the need for timely and costly field tests later during the system validation stage. The PHIL as a technology has been studied over the last 20 years, focusing mostly on the software/hardware interfaces and on system stability challenges. However, there has not been a consensus yet on how a PHIL system should be designed, validated and operated to maximize its benefits. The present work provides answers to these questions. Starting from the existing research experience and use cases, the present paper introduces practical guidelines for PHIL modeling, design, laboratory implementation and validation, and it identifies a few remaining open topics that need to be addressed to enable wider adoption of PHIL for testing and validation of electrical equipment in industrial environments.

As we reach the end of another exciting year at the Power Electronics Society with around 14,000 members, it reminds me of how far our community has come and how much opportunity still lies ahead. Over the past months, our Society has seen remarkable engagement across all fronts. Through our conferences, e.g., ECCE North America, eGRID, WiPDA, and INTELEC, as well as the many regional, Technical Committee, and Chapter events, continue to grow in both participation and technical quality. The energy and enthusiasm at these gatherings affirm the strength of our community. I am particularly encouraged by the increasing involvement of industry members, students, and young professionals, whose fresh ideas and dedication are shaping the future of PELS.

Offshore wind (OSW) energy represents a vast and largely untapped resource capable of significantly contributing to the rising global electricity demand while advancing ambitious decarbonization and clean energy transition goals. Despite its potential, the effective harnessing of OSW is contingent upon the strategic and reliable integration of offshore generation into existing onshore AC power systems. Multi-terminal high-voltage direct current (MTDC) networks have emerged as a promising solution for this task, offering enhanced flexibility, scalability, and operational resilience. However, several technical and operational challenges—such as lack of standardization, coordinated control of multiple multi-vendor converters, reliable communication infrastructures, protection schemes, and seamless integration of offshore HVDC substations—must be addressed to fully realize the benefits of MTDC systems. This review paper critically examines these challenges and proposes a control, communication, protection, and HVDC substation design that could be adopted as an initial guideline for the efficient and secure integration of OSW into AC grids. By identifying current research gaps and synthesizing existing solutions, the paper provides a comprehensive framework for optimizing the role of MTDC networks in future offshore wind deployments.

Short-circuit and open-circuit faults of a converter's power device often lead to catastrophic failure of the entire system if not detected and acted upon within a sub-microsecond time frame, particularly for emerging wide bandgap (WBG) power semiconductors. While much research has been done on the fast and accurate protection and detection of short-circuit faults, there has been less success corresponding to open-circuit faults. Common downfalls include protection and detection that are too application-specific, take longer than a couple of microseconds, and are not cost-efficient. This paper proposes a new open-circuit fault protection and detection system integrated with a pre-existing short-circuit system called desaturation protection. First, a literature review is conducted to confirm the necessity of the new protection and detection scheme. Second, the operation principle and design considerations of the newly proposed protection and detection circuitry are discussed. Third, a simulation and experiment are designed, conducted, and compared to showcase the new scheme's success, effectiveness, and adaptability in an actual inverter. The results of testing the proposed system illustrate the success and reliability of the new fault protection and detection scheme.

Dr. Michael (Mischa) Steurer was a senior researcher at Florida State University in the Center for Advanced Power Systems (CAPS), where he was a leading contributor in many areas related to power electronics, including hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) simulation, fast isolation device technology development, and fault management in medium voltage dc (MVDC) systems. Dr. Steurer received the B.S. and M.S. degrees in electrical engineering from the Vienna Technical University, Austria. He received the Ph.D. in electrical engineering from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH), Zürich, Switzerland. Since 2001, Dr. Steurer conducted research at CAPS, working with a diverse group of collaborators and sponsors from government, academia, and industry. Dr. Steurer contributed to several societies and journals, including numerous publications and patents, as well as serving as reviewer, conference organizer, and contributing to standards. Much of Dr. Steurer’s research focused on shipboard power systems, and, in 2019, he was the recipient of the prestigious Solberg Award, presented by the American Society of Naval Engineers.

This article describes the objectives and key results from a feasibility study about using hydrogen (H ₂ ) generation and storage in a co-firing project sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) named H ₂ Orange. The work includes a conceptual design, including a technoeconomic study, technology gap assessment, maturation plan, and commercialization plan of a nominal 50-megawatt hours (MWh) electrolysis-based hydrogen energy storage system. The project investigated optimal sizing, design, and integration of a hydrogen energy storage system with an existing 14.3-megawatt (MW) gas turbine supplying both electricity and thermal power at the Clemson University combined heat and power (CHP) plant. It is anticipated that the integration of H ₂ storage with CHP will be able to provide the Clemson campus with backup capability (power and steam) that includes on-site solar photovoltaic (PV) arrays and separate battery energy storage. Power electronic conversion technologies are of key relevance to hydrogen storage for decarbonizing fossil fuel generators at all levels of this project.