December 7, 2022

Senior Professor Kashem Muttaqi elevated to IEEE Fellow 

Fellowship recognises professor Muttaqi’s exceptional contributions to Australia’s renewable energy infrastructure

University of Wollongong (UOW) researcher Senior Professor Kashem Muttaqi has been elevated to a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), recognising his outstanding contribution to modelling and controlling renewable and distributed energy resources in Australia.

IEEE is the world's largest technical professional organisation, with over 400,000 members in over 160 countries. It is a leading authority in aerospace systems, computers and telecommunications, biomedical engineering, electric power, consumer electronics, and many other technical areas.

An IEEE fellowship is a prestigious elevation and recognition of a significant contribution to the field. It is a distinction reserved for select IEEE members whose extraordinary accomplishments in any of the fields of interest are deemed fitting for this prestigious grade elevation.

Senior Professor Muttaqi from the Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences is the Director of the ARC Industrial Transformation Training Centre in Energy Technologies for Future Grids, sponsored by the Australian Government, and is an expert in developing solutions for renewable energy generation, transmission and distribution.

He has more than 25 years of academic experience and has authored or co-authored 500 papers in international journals and conference proceedings. He has supervised more than 26 higher-degree research students to completion.

“I am honoured to have been recognised by IEEE for our work in renewable energy,” Professor Muttaqi said.

“With the world transitioning to renewable sources of energy, finding the right and effective solutions for transforming and distributing renewable energy remains a key global challenge.

“Through international collaborations and investments, we will be able to produce energy solutions that are advanced, sustainable, and convenient to use for power grid decarbonisation.

“The new technologies that we are investing in have a great potential to improve the performance of our national grid, and it will greatly strengthen the competitiveness of the Australian power industries in the world market.”

Professor Muttaqi and his team’s contributions add significant value to UOW’s position as a leader in providing solutions to global renewable energy challenges.

His works on standalone renewable energy control and network supported by distributed energy resources are highly cited. Two of his most significant contributions are highlighted below.

Standalone Renewable Energy Control:

Professor Muttaqi’s most significant contribution to renewable and distributed generation control is his thorough and rigorous approach to developing and documenting renewable power generation controls to operate renewable resources as standalone power systems, especially for remote, rural and regional areas. He was one of the early researchers to formalise the model of renewable energy systems as structured dynamical systems for control design.

In this research, he explicitly exploited the system strength and inertial response for effective frequency and voltage regulation. His work contributed to formalising the governing system of renewable energy systems to work as standalone power systems capable of power dispatch from renewable resources.

His work on the control of wind turbines for their standalone operation carried out 13 years ago was groundbreaking in the wind energy system field. It has created a wider impact and is changing the field of wind power application, especially in remote and regional areas.

Network Support by Distributed Energy Resources:

Professor Muttaqi’s next most significant contribution to renewable and distributed generation control is his work on network support through the control of distributed energy resources, including energy storage. It is one of the pioneering works of the renewable energy system that has made a significant impact and has changed the field of renewable energy. 

He was one of the early researchers to formalise the variable power-factor operation for these energy resources, and demonstrated the concept of voltage support by distributed generation 18 years ago in a single-wire earth return system, a long rural feeder in regional Australia.

Because of its wider acceptance and impact, Grid-codes and Standards are now changing from unity power factor operation stipulated in the past to the variable power factor operation for these new energy resources.