Ralph M. KENNEL
Ordnarius (Professor), Institute for Electrical Drive Systems and Power Electronics, Department of Electrical Engineering and Information Technology, Technical University of Munich, GERMANY
Research interests:
encoderless control of electrical drives, modern control strategies for electrical drives, hardware-in-the-loop systems, renewable energy systems (focus on photovoltaics, wind energy & efficiency)
Keynote address:
Predictive Control for Power Converters and Drives - Concepts, Applications and Trends
Abstract:
Model Predictive Control (MPC) is a conceptually simple yet powerful methodology to control power converters and electric drives. It has many advantages in comparison to traditional controllers including its capability to intuitively handle a great variety of control problems by considering different modes of operation and directly incorporating system constraints and additional requirements. MPC minimizes an objective (cost) function subject to the plant model dynamics to obtain the control action. The underlying concepts are intuitive, the resulting controllers are inherently stable and, once calculated, easy to implement. The advances in processing power of digital signal processors have recently promoted MPC into the first commercial applications, which opened a door toward improved performance and efficiency of power electronic converters and drives demanded by the evolving industry applications. Application examples will be presented and discussed. The difference in control processing between conventional control methods and MPC algorithms will be shown.
Ralph KENNEL Ralph M. Kennel was born in 1955 at Kaiserslautern (Germany). In 1979 he got his diploma degree and in 1984 his Dr.-Ing. (Ph.D.) degree from the University of Kaiserslautern. From 1983 to 1999 he worked on several positions with Robert BOSCH GmbH (Germany). Until 1997 he was responsible for the development of servo drives. Dr. Kennel was one of the main supporters of VECON and SERCOS interface, two multi-company development projects for a microcontroller and a digital interface especially dedicated to servo drives. Furthermore he took actively part in the definition and release of new standards with respect to CE marking for servo drives. Between 1997 and 1999 Dr. Kennel was responsible for "Advanced and Product Development of Fractional Horsepower Motors" in automotive applications. His main activity was preparing the introduction of brushless drive concepts to the automotive market. From 1994 to 1999 Dr. Kennel was appointed Visiting Professor at the University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne (England, UK). From 1999 - 2008 he was Professor for Electrical Machines and Drives at Wuppertal University (Germany). Since 2008 he is Professor for Electrical Drive systems and Power Electronics at Technische Universitaet Muenchen (Germany). His main interests today are: Sensorless control of AC drives, predictive control of power electronics and Hardware-in-the-Loop systems.
Dr. Kennel is a Senior Member of IEEE, a Fellow of IET (former IEE) and a Chartered Engineer in the UK. Within IEEE he is Treasurer of the Germany Section as well as Distinguished Lecturer of the Power Electronics Society (IEEE-PELS). Dr. Kennel has received in 2013 the Harry Owen Distinguished Service Award from IEEE-PELS, the EPE Association Distinguished Service Award in 2015 as well as the 2019 EPE
Outstanding Achievement Award. In 2018 Dr. Kennel received the Doctoral Honoris Causa degree from the Universitatea Stefan cel Mare in Suceava (Romania). Dr. Kennel was appointed “Extraordinary Professor” by the University of Stellenbosch (South Africa) from 2016 to 2019 and as “Visiting Professor” at the Haixi Institute by the Chinese Academy of Sciences from 2016 to 2021.
