Special issue on PES/SSD'07

Citation

Masmoudi, A. (2008), "Special issue on PES/SSD'07", COMPEL - The international journal for computation and mathematics in electrical and electronic engineering, Vol. 27 No. 5. https://doi.org/10.1108/compel.2008.17427eaa.001

Special issue on PES/SSD'07

Article Type: Preface From: COMPEL: The International Journal for Computation and Mathematics in Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Volume 27, Issue 5

The International Conference on Power Electrical Systems, organized within the Fourth IEEE Multi-conference on Systems, Signals and Devices (SSD’07), took place in the city of Hammamet (Tunisia), 19-22 March 2007. This special issue of COMPEL, the International Journal for Computation and Mathematics in Electrical and Electronic Engineering, includes extended and improved versions of 15 papers selected from 71 presented during this conference. The topics of the published papers cover almost the whole field of the power electrical engineering comprising electric machines, drives and power systems.

Starting with electric machines, concentrated winding fractional-slot synchronous PM machines have been gaining a lot of interest over the last few years. This is mainly due to the several advantages that this type of windings provides. These include:

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  high-power density;

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  high efficiency;

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  short-end turns;

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  high-slot fill factor especially when coupled with segmented stator structures;

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  low-cogging torque;

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  flux-weakening capability; and

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  fault-tolerance.

Beyond PM excitation, new topologies of synchronous machines with DC and hybrid excitations are currently under investigation in an attempt to be integrated in automotive applications. The sizing of these machines based on their reluctant models represents a crucial step.

Concerning drives, different topologies are considered. Of particular interest are reduced structure inverter-based electric propulsion systems in so far as the cost-effectiveness, the compactness and the reliability are concerned. Multilevel inverters remain a state of the art topic with possible integration in different applications such as interfacing wind farms to the electric network. Both applications represent currently a crucial challenge accounting for the alarming increase of the fuel cost and of the excessive emissions of greenhouse gases which have catastrophic impacts on the life cycle.

Finally, electric power generation and distribution have been the subject of three papers among the 15. An emerging technology of variable speed and decoupled generation brings new horizon for efficiency improvement of diesel engine-driven generation systems. Fuel saving is gained due to the adjustment of the speed to the high-efficiency operation region of the engine. Moreover, the variable speed represents an additional degree of freedom in the design of the engine and the generator.

I would like to thank Professor Jan K. Sykulski, the Editor-in-Chief of COMPEL, and the staff of Emerald Group Publishing Limited, especially Doctor Harry Colson.

I would like to congratulate Professors Nabil Derbel and Hans-Rulf Tränkler, Co-general Chairmen of SSD’07, and my colleagues Mohamed Chtourou, Chairman of the International Conference on Systems Analysis and Automatic Control, Faouzi Derbel, Chairman of the International Conference on Communication and Signal Processing and Olfa Kanoun, Chairman of the International Conference on Sensors, Circuits and Instrumentation Systems.

Full recognition needs to be given here to the Organizing Committee, particularly to Professors Mohamed Djemal, Moez Feki, Najoua Ben Amara, Dorra Sellami, Chokri Rekik, Amin Kallel, Houda Ben Jemaa and Hanen Medhaffar.

Finally, I would like to congratulate all members of my laboratory: the Research Unit on Renewable Energies and Electric Vehicles, who significantly contributed to the International Conference on Power Electrical Systems, and to the present special issue.

Ahmed Masmoudi

Guest Editor