2310 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER ELECTRONICS, VOL. 23, NO.

5, SEPTEMBER 2008
A Seamless Mode Transfer Maximum
Power Point Tracking Controller For
Thermoelectric Generator Applications
Rae-Young Kim, Student Member, IEEE, and Jih-Sheng Lai, Fellow, IEEE
AbstractA boost-cascaded-with-buck converter-based power
conditioning system employing a seamless mode transfer max-
imum power point tracking controller is proposed to maximize
energy production of a thermoelectric generator while balancing a
vehicle battery, alternator output power, and vehicle load. When a
vehicle battery is fully charged, the proposed controller switches to
a power matching mode seamlessly by a dual loop control system,
which detects the input and output voltages and currents of the
boost-cascaded-with-buck converter, and adjusts the commands
accordingly. Both voltage and current loops are designed in a
frequency domain using small signal models to ensure stable
operation. A mode selection and voltage and current commands
are determined by a digital signal processor-based controller. The
experimental results with a dynamic source and load steps are
presented to show the effectiveness of the proposed approach.
Index TermsMaximum power point tracking (MPPT) con-
troller, seamless mode transfer, thermoelectric generator.
I. INTRODUCTION
A
RECENTLY developed thermoelectric generator (TEG)
has shown promise in vehicle applications [1], [2]. By in-
tegrating the TEG with an exhaust pipe and a heat exchanger
system, it is possible to recover the engine waste heat, and con-
vert it to electric power for battery charging and subsequently
improve vehicle gas efciency. In a recent study, a 10% fuel
efciency improvement was predicted by using the TEG to of-
oad an alternator [2]. In order to interface between the TEG
and a vehicle electrical bus, a power converter is essential. The
power converter can operate in two different modes: 1) max-
imum power point tracking (MPPT) and 2) power matching
(PM). When a vehicle battery is not fully charged, the MPPT
mode is activated to harness as much power as possible from
waste heat. During this mode, if TEG output is higher than ve-
hicle power demand, the TEG supplies power for both a vehicle
load and a battery. If TEG output is less than vehicle power de-
mand, the TEG powers the vehicle load with the assistance of
the battery. On the other hands, when the battery is already fully
charged, the PM mode is activated to reduce power production
Manuscript received October 10, 2007; revised March 04, 2008. Current ver-
sion published November 21, 2008. Recommended by Associate Editor J. Guer-
rero. This work was supported in part by the Visteon Corporation and by BSST,
LLC. This paper is a revision of a paper presented at the 2007 IEEEIndustry Ap-
plications Conference, 42nd IASAnnual Meeting, NewOrleans, LA, September
2327, 2007.
The authors are with the Future Energy Electronics Center, Virginia Poly-
technic Institute and State University, Blacksburg, VA 24061-0111 USA
(e-mail: rykim@vt.edu).
Color versions of one or more of the gures in this paper are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identier 10.1109/TPEL.2008.2001904
and to avoid overcharging the battery. During the PM mode, the
vehicle electrical bus is regulated at a oat charging voltage by
the power converter.
For the MPPT methods, there have been signicant re-
searches in photovoltaic applications. Since they do not
necessarily operate in two different modes, most literature
simply has shown the control with generic MPPT methods such
as the hill climbing method [3], the perturbation and observa-
tion methods [4], [5], the incremental conductance methods
[6], and the ripple correlation control methods [7], [8]. The
microprocessor-adapted methods such as a fuzzy logic, a neural
network and a state-space-based model have been proposed for
performance improvement [9][11].
Although most existing MPPT methods can be applied to the
proposed TEG systems, it is necessary to modify the use of
the MPPT method to operate in two different modes. In [12],
a system with PV output charging to a battery was implemented
with a single-stage dc-dc converter and a two-loop control tech-
nique, where a voltage loop regulates the PV voltage to track
a maximum power point, and a current loop regulates the bat-
tery charging current. These loops were alternately selected ac-
cording to battery charging status. In [13], a two-stage dc-dc
converter was adopted to use an electric double layer capacitor
for energy storage and to implement MPPT to regulate battery
charging voltage. There were two operating modes for the rst
stage converter and three operating modes for the second stage
converter. These modes were changed with the voltage statuses
of the double-layer capacitor and the battery. The major problem
of the control techniques found in [12] and [13] is the tran-
sient over-voltage or -current associated with the dynamic mode
changes. Literature [14] solved this problemby controlling solar
array output power. In [15] and [16], a voltage loop control tech-
nique to operate in an MPPT mode for battery charging was pro-
posed. The problem with these techniques was they did not con-
sider the case when the PV generated more power than needed.
In this paper, a boost-cascaded-with-buck converter is pro-
posed as a power converter to operate in a wide TEG voltage
range, i.e., from 0 to 25 V. The common dc bus between two
stages can adopt a double layer capacitor as the energy storage
option. The control loops allow the MPPT or the PM mode
operation to maximize the TEG output or to match the TEG
output with battery state-of-charge and vehicle load conditions.
In order to avoid transients associated with a mode transfer be-
tween the MPPT and the PM modes, a double dual-loop con-
troller is proposed for both boost and buck converters with a cur-
rent loop as the inner loop and a voltage loop as the outer loop.
0885-8993/$25.00 2008 IEEE
KIM AND LAI: SEAMLESS MODE TRANSFER MAXIMUM POWER POINT TRACKING CONTROLLER 2311
Fig. 1. Thermoelectric generator power conversion system employing the
seamless mode transfer MPPT controller.
The mode transfer is controlled by a voltage loop that regulates
the battery voltage. When the battery voltage is fully charged,
the power converter needs to switch to PM mode. The proposed
mode transfer approach is to incorporate the voltage loop con-
trol with a perturbation and observation (P&O) method. Un-
like the mode transfer relying on a form of switch that requires
stop-and-go, and thus producing signicant transients, the pro-
posed approach allows the mode transfer seamlessly.
In designing both voltage and current loop controllers, the
boost-cascaded-with-buck converter was modeled in average
mode, and the frequency domain analysis and design approach
was adopted for a proportional-integral (PI) controller to ensure
control loop stability. Converter stability and mode transfer
smoothness were veried with a hardware prototype. The power
converter consists of two back-to-back three-phase converters
that achieve overall power conversion efciency of 96% at the
nominal power condition. The controller is implemented with
a TMS320F2812 digital signal processor board that includes
the essential sensor conditioning and interface circuits for the
power stage.
II. THERMOELECTRIC GENERATOR MPPT CONTROLLER
A. System Description
Fig. 1 shows the proposed TEGpower conversion systemem-
ploying the seamless mode transfer MPPT controller for vehicle
applications. The TEG produces output voltage ranging from 0
to 25 V depending on temperature difference, and the power
converter needs to regulate the output voltage between 12.3 and
16.5 V to provide battery charging. The power converter works
with the alternator denoted as ALT to regulate the vehicle power
bus according to availability of the TEG output and vehicle load
conditions. When the TEG output is insufcient to supply all
the vehicle loads, the alternator needs to kick in and provide
extra power to regulate the electrical bus. When the TEG output
is high enough to power all the vehicle loads, the alternator
can be shut off. With extensive circuit topology evaluations, a
boost-cascaded-with-buck converter is selected to meet the de-
sired efciency of 95% or higher. To ensure power handling
capability and to reduce ripple and its associated losses, the
proposed boost-cascaded-with-buck converter is to have three
phases interleaving each other for current sharing and ripple re-
duction. In addition, synchronous rectication is employed to
Fig. 2. Power-versus-current characteristics of the thermoelectric generator
under varying TEG voltage condition.
Fig. 3. Block diagram of the seamless mode transfer MPPT controller.
reduce conduction loss. The dc-link capacitor is used as the
middle stage energy buffer, which can be a double-layer capac-
itor to allow more exibility of energy harnessing.
B. Basic Operation of the Proposed MPPT Controller
The maximum power point (MPP) of the TEG is a function
of exhaust temperature, and can be characterized with the TEG
voltage, which changes dynamically with a temperature differ-
ence between its P-type and N-type materials, and source resis-
tance [2], [17]. As shown in Fig. 1, the TEG electrical model
is represented by using a voltage source denoted as behind a
source resistance denoted as . Given a temperature condition,
the is determined, and then output power versus current plot,
which is called P-I characteristics, can be obtained as shown
in Fig. 2. The curve with higher or higher power represents
higher temperature condition. Note that there exists only one
MPP, which is denoted as a dotted line, of the given value.
Fig. 3 shows the block diagram of the seamless mode transfer
MPPT controller. The boost converter controller denoted as
dotted lines is responsible for the MPPT or the PM modes
depending on battery state-of-charge. The modied P&O
compensator continuously loops back the input voltage
, the input current and the error of output voltage ,
and then adjusts the input current command to capture as
much power as possible from the TEG in the MPPT mode or
to regulate the output voltage as commanded in the PM mode.
The detailed explanation of the is presented in Section
2312 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER ELECTRONICS, VOL. 23, NO. 5, SEPTEMBER 2008
II-C. After comparing the with the , the error is fed into
the current compensator to generate the control voltage
. The is converted to the duty cycle for the boost
converter by the PWM circuit.
The buck converter controller denoted as solid lines is respon-
sible for regulating the dc-link voltage . The current compen-
sator regulates the output current to match the output
current command , and the voltage compensator reg-
ulates the according to the given voltage command . A
higher allows more energy storage that can provide more
power to ofoad the alternator for better gas efciency.
C. Algorithm of the Modied P&O Compensator
P&Omethods have been widely used in photovoltaic systems
for MPPT. The basic idea of the P&Omethods is to regulate cur-
rent or voltage to pursue a positive slope of P-I characteristics
before reaching the MPP and a negative slope of a P-I character-
istics after passing the MPP. After a few iterations of the P&O
process, a system operating point moves toward the MPP.
For the modied P&O compensator , the basic algorithm
can be described as follows: 1) when the output voltage is
lower than its command , the MPPT mode is activated to cap-
ture as much power as possible from the TEG, and moves
toward a direction which increases TEG power; 2) when the
is higher than the , the PM mode is triggered to reduce power
production, and the changes toward a direction which de-
creases TEG power; and 3) when the equals the , the
settles down and remains unchanged. Based on the previous al-
gorithm, the can be implemented as (1) in the digital control
(1)
where is the error between the and at the th sam-
pling time, is a constant gain, repre-
sents a sign of the instantaneous slope of the input power at
the th sampling time, and the denotes a limiting function
to set the maximum perturbation for avoiding excessive oscilla-
tions. The and the are the current commands
at the th and th sampling time, respectively. The in
(1) exhibits both a generic P&O method and a voltage compen-
sator, and thus, the smooth mode transfer is achieved without
any transients.
In the PM mode, there exists two possible operating points
under given load condition on P-I characteristics of Fig. 2, but
the operating point with smaller current is desirable for the high
power conversion efciency. In the , the function
in (1) is forced to set a positive regardless of the calculation
result of the power slope, and thus, the PM mode operates in the
desirable point which exists in the right side of the MPP.
III. MODELING OF TEG POWER CONVERSION SYSTEM
For the design of compensators with desirable dynamics and
stability, frequency domain based design techniques have been
widely used. The proposed boost-cascaded-with-buck converter
has a common bus with a dc-link capacitor, and thus an interac-
tion between two converters exists. In order to predict dynamics
and stability with the consideration of the interaction, the accu-
rate model including the TEG and battery is derived.
Fig. 4. Equivalent circuit of the boost-cascaded-with-buck converter with the
TEG and battery model.
Fig. 5. Subset circuits of the boost-cascaded-with buck converter: (a) boost
converter sunk with a current source and (b) buck converter sourced with a cur-
rent source.
Fig. 4 shows the electrical model of the TEG system em-
ploying the boost-cascaded-with-buck converter. From the
modeling point of view, the complete three-phase interleaved
circuit can be represented with a single-phase one with one third
of the original inductance. A linear electrical battery model,
which consists of a voltage source and an internal resistor
, is used to represent the short-term output characteristic of a
battery [18], [19] and a vehicle load is modeled as a resistor .
Considering Fig. 4 and the relationship between the inductor
currents , and the upper switch currents , , the aver-
aged voltage of the dc-link capacitor over one switching period
can be expressed in (2)
(2)
where the math accent denotes the averaged value over one
switching period. Equation (2) reveals that the boost-cascaded-
with buck converter can be decomposed into two subset circuits
of the basic converter sunk or sourced with a current source,
as shown in Fig. 5. For the each subset circuit, the converter
modeling is straightforward and easily derived by using the non-
linear averaged model of the PWM switch [20]. Such converter
KIM AND LAI: SEAMLESS MODE TRANSFER MAXIMUM POWER POINT TRACKING CONTROLLER 2313
Fig. 6. Linearized small-signal circuit of the boost-cascaded with buck converter with the TEG and battery model.
modeling signicantly simplies the model effort while pro-
viding a straightforward solution that approximates the conven-
tional accurate modeling. Aggregating the two subset models,
the nonlinear averaged model of the TEG system employing the
boost-cascaded-with-buck converter is obtained as expressed in
(3) and (4)
(3)
(4)
The small-signal model can be derived as follows. The state
variables , , and , input variables and , output
variables , , and , and duty ratios , are decomposed
into the nominal values and small-signal deviations. When the
decomposed variables and the duty ratios are substituted into
(3) and (4), the linearized small-signal model is derived with
assumption that the nonlinear or second-order terms are ne-
glected under sufciently small deviations. Fig. 6 illustrates the
resulted linearized equivalent circuit of the TEG system em-
ploying the boost-cascaded-with-buck converter, where upper-
case letters denote the nominal values, and the math accent
denotes the small-signal deviations from the nominal values.
The major control-to-output transfer functions are obtained
from Fig. 6, as shown in (5)(8), where and are duty
cycle-to-boost inductor current and duty cycle-to-output voltage
transfer functions of the boost converter, and and are
duty cycle-to-buck inductor current and duty cycle-to-dc link
voltage transfer functions of the buck converter. In the equa-
tions, the terms represent gain, the terms represent the
zeros, and the terms represent the poles. The transfer func-
tions reveal a third-order dynamics with one real pole and one
pair of complex conjugate poles. Note that in (6) shows
right-half-plane zero and in (8) has a negative dc gain
(5)
(6)
(7)
(8)
IV. DESIGN OF THE PROPOSED MPPT CONTROLLER
A. Buck Converter Controller
Fig. 7 represents the block diagram of the buck converter
controller in a closed loop, where and denote feed-
back current and voltage sensor of the buck converter and is
PWM gain. The two-zero and three-pole PI compensator of (9)
is used for the current loop compensator , and the one-zero
and two-pole PI compensator of (10) is used for the voltage loop
compensator to ensure stability under both light-load and
heavy-load conditions of and
(9)
2314 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER ELECTRONICS, VOL. 23, NO. 5, SEPTEMBER 2008
Fig. 7. Block diagram of the buck converter controller in a closed loop.
(10)
Using the circuit parameters: 15 V, 100 m ,
20 V, 14.4 V, 5 H, 3.3 H,
500 F, 10 m , 12 V, and 10 m , the cur-
rent compensator parameters and voltage compensator param-
eters are determined. The is designed at 4.7 kHz,
5.5 kHz, 20 kHz, 23 kHz, and
as shown in (11). The is designed at 350 Hz,
2.5 kHz, and as shown in (12). Note
that the needs a negative feedback gain due to the negative
gain of the
(11)
(12)
Fig. 8(a) shows gain/phase plots of the current loop for an
open and closed loop under light- and heavy-load conditions.
The design result shows a phase margin higher than 100 and
a gain margin higher than 20 dB for both light- and heavy-load
conditions. The crossover frequency is about 800 Hz. For the
voltage loop, the design result shows a phase margin higher than
80 and a gain margin higher than 40 dB for both light- and
heavy-load conditions, as shown in Fig. 8(b). The crossover fre-
quency ranges from 60 to 300 Hz.
B. Boost Converter Controller
Fig. 9 shows the closed-loop controller block diagram of the
boost converter controller, where and denote feed-
back current and voltage sensor of the boost converter. The
two-zero and three-pole PI compensator of (9) is used for the
current loop compensator . The designed current loop com-
pensator parameters under the same circuit parameters men-
tioned previously with both light- and heavy-load conditions of
2.5 and 0.5 are: 2.0 kHz,
2.7 kHz, 19 kHz, and
(13)
The frequency domain representation of the modied P&O
compensator is derived from (1). With given circuit pa-
rameters, the of (1) sets to a positive one
Fig. 8. Gain/phase plots of the buck converter controller for an open and closed
loop: (a) the current controller loop gain and (b) the voltage controller loop gain.
Fig. 9. Block diagram of the boost converter controller in a closed loop.
because the converter operates in the PM mode. When the ef-
fect of the limiting function is neglected, the -domain expres-
sion of (1) is substituted by , and multiplied with
in order to consider the zero-order-hold effect
[21]. The result of this calculation is given in (14), where is
KIM AND LAI: SEAMLESS MODE TRANSFER MAXIMUM POWER POINT TRACKING CONTROLLER 2315
Fig. 10. Gain/phase plot of the boost converter controller for an open and
closed loop: (a) the current controller loop gain and (b) the voltage controller
loop gain.
the sampling frequency. Note that the exhibits the inherent
pole at the origin, and thus zero steady-state error is achieved
without an additional compensator
(14)
The constant gain should be selected to provide a proper
phase and gain margin for stability, and its crossover frequency
should be much less than that of the inner loop so that an inter-
action between the inner loop and the output loop is avoided. In
this paper, the is designed to 0.02 under the sampling fre-
quency of 10 kHz. The switching frequency of the converter
is set to 50 kHz.
Fig. 10(a) shows gain/phase plots of the current loop for an
open and closed loop under light- and heavy-load conditions.
The design result shows a phase margin higher than 130 and
a gain margin higher than 17 dB for both light- and heavy-
load conditions. The crossover frequency ranges from 600 Hz
Fig. 11. Test setup for the thermoelectric generator power conversion system.
to 3 kHz. For the voltage loop, the design result shows a phase
margin higher than 60 and a gain margin higher than 20 dB for
both light- and heavy-load conditions, as shown in Fig. 10(b).
The designed crossover frequency ranges from 70 to 300 Hz.
Note that the phase of the voltage loop in Fig. 10(b) dramat-
ically drops beyond the half sampling frequency , due to
the digital sampling effect.
V. EXPERIMENTAL VERIFICATION
In order to verify the effectiveness and stability of the pro-
posed seamless mode transfer MPPT controller, a complete
TEG prototype was built and tested. Fig. 11 shows the test setup
of the power converter and associated instruments. It consists
of four major parts: a constant voltage controlled power supply
with a series connected resistor to mimic a thermoelectric
generator, a three-phase interleaved boost-cascaded-with-buck
converter, a DSP to implement the modied P&O compensator,
and a battery bank with load resistors. A precision current shunt
is used to calibrate the current measurement. The three-phase
interleaved boost-cascaded-with-buck converter consists of
two stacked power boards, where a current compensator is
implemented by analog circuits. The power supply voltage is
set to 14.9 V. For the internal resistance of the TEG, different
combinations are obtained with a heat-suck resistor bank that
contains six resistors. For the load resistor bank, different resis-
tance values are obtained with paralleled and series connections
of 12 resistors that are either 1 or 0.5 . A 12-V battery is
connected in parallel to the load resistor bank. The output
voltage reference of the power converter was set at 14.4 V.
A. Mode Transfer Test
To verify the smooth and continuous mode transfer, a load
resistance is changed under a xed power supply voltage
of 14.9 V and a xed internal resistance of 0.21 . Fig. 12(a)
shows test results when the operating point is changed from the
MPPT mode to the PM mode. The load is reduced by increasing
the from 0.5 to 1 . Before reduction, the output voltage
is less than its command of 14.4 V, and thus the controller is
operating in the MPPT mode. The theoretical maximum power
2316 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER ELECTRONICS, VOL. 23, NO. 5, SEPTEMBER 2008
Fig. 12. Experimental waveforms for mode transfer test: (a) from a maximum
power point tracking mode to a power matching mode (1 s/div) and (b) from a
power matching mode to a maximum power point tracking mode (1 s/div).
MPP was calculated to be 264.3 W at 35.5 A. When the load
is reduced, the reaches its command. The input current
is reduced gradually, and the operating mode is changed to the
PM mode.
Fig. 12(b) indicates that the operating point is returned to the
MPPT mode again when the load is increased by changing the
to 0.5 . After the is stepped to 0.5 , the drops
less than its command. The starts increasing, and the input
voltage starts decreasing due to more voltage drop of the
internal resistor . Eventually, the reaches the previous
value 35 A and the mode transfer is completed. Note that the
dc-link voltage is always maintained at 20 V as commanded
despite a mode transfer and a converter load change.
B. MPPT Tracking to Internal Resistance Variation
To see the tracking behavior of the proposed MPPT controller
under varying value, the steps from 0.21 to 0.26 , and
vice versa. Theoretical maximum power is 264.3 W at 35.5 A
in the case of 0.21 , and 191.4 W at 25.6 A in the case of 0.26
, respectively. Small load resistance of 0.5 is used to
keep the operating point on the MPPT mode regardless of vari-
ation of the . Fig. 13(a) shows experimental waveforms when
Fig. 13. Experimental waveforms when internal resistance is changed: (a) from
a small resistance to a large resistance (1 s/div) and (b) from a large resistance
to a small resistance (1 s/div).
the varies from 0.21 to 0.26 . After increasing resistance,
the MPPT controller decreases the input current to track the
MPP smoothly. Finally, the MPPT controller reaches its theo-
retical MPP.
Fig. 13(b) indicates that when the returns to 0.21 , the
starts to increase, and reaches 33 A. It is observed that the input
voltage increases as soon as the changes due to decreased
voltage drop. The output voltage changes depending on the
input power . The dc-link voltage is well regulated at 20 V
as commanded.
C. DC-Link Voltage Regulation
As a bonus advantage of the proposed MPPT controller, the
dc-link voltage can be regulated at any given command. It
allows more exibility of energy harnessing when the dc-link
capacitor is replaced with an electric double-layer capacitor.
Fig. 14 shows experimental waveforms when the dc-link voltage
command steps from 20 to 30 V, and vice versa. The fol-
lows the . The output voltage and the input power are
not affected by this variation. From the tested waveform of the
, it is seen that the proposed double dual-loop controllers are
stable under different dc link voltages. Note that it is observed
that the input current is perturbed within 3 A peak-to-peak
KIM AND LAI: SEAMLESS MODE TRANSFER MAXIMUM POWER POINT TRACKING CONTROLLER 2317
Fig. 14. Experimental waveforms for a dc-link voltage regulation (1 s/div).
ac current of 50 Hz to track the MPP. The peak-to-peak mag-
nitude was set by the limiting function of the modied P&O
compensator.
VI. CONCLUSION
In this paper, a three-phase boost-cascaded-with-buck con-
verter is adopted for a high-efciency TEG power conditioning
systemto operate in a wide input voltage range and to maximum
TEG output. A modied perturbation and observation MPPT
method along with double dual-loop controllers is proposed to
allow seamless mode transfer when the TEG output exceeds the
battery state of charge. The proposed method allows smooth and
continuous mode transfer without a sudden transient. During
mode transfer and load steps, the dc-link voltage is regulated at
a constant value as commanded. It allows more exibility of en-
ergy harnessing when a dc-link capacitor is replaced with ultra
capacitor.
The entire TEG power conversion system conguration and
operating principle of the controller were described in detail.
The controller was designed by using a small-signal model of
the power converter, and then the hardware experiments were
carried out to verify the design. From experimental results,
the stability of the proposed MPPT controller was proven,
and MPPT and output voltage regulation were veried under:
1) load steps; 2) source impedance variation; and 3) different
dc link voltage commands.
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Rae-Young Kim (S06) received the B.S. and M.S.
degrees in electrical engineering from the Hanyang
University, Seoul, Korea, in 1997 and 1999, respec-
tively. He is currently pursuing the Ph.D. degree in
power electronics from the Virginia Polytechnic In-
stitute and State University, Blacksburg.
He is currently a Graduate Research Assistant with
the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State Univer-
sity. From 1999 to 2004, he was a Senior Researcher
with the Hyosung Heavy Industry Research and De-
velopment Center, Seoul, Korea. His research inter-
ests include modeling and control of power converters, soft switching tech-
niques, and power converter applications in renewable energy systems.
2318 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER ELECTRONICS, VOL. 23, NO. 5, SEPTEMBER 2008
Jih-Sheng (Jason) Lai (S85M89SM93F07)
received the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical
engineering from the University of Tennessee,
Knoxville, in 1985 and 1989, respectively.
From 1980 to 1983, he was the Head of the Elec-
trical Engineering Department, Ming-Chi Institute
of Technology, Taipei, Taiwan, R.O.C., where he
initiated a power electronics program and received
a grant from his college and a fellowship from the
National Science Council to study abroad. In 1986,
he became a staff member with the University of
Tennessee, where he taught control systems and energy conversion courses. In
1989, he joined the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) Power Electronics
Applications Center (PEAC), where he managed EPRI-sponsored power elec-
tronics research projects. From 1993, he worked with the Oak Ridge National
Laboratory as the Power Electronics Lead Scientist, where he initiated a high
power electronics program and developed several novel high power converters
including multilevel converters and soft-switching inverters. In 1996, he joined
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Blacksburg. He is currently
a Professor and the Director of the Future Energy Electronics Center. His
main research areas include high efciency power electronics conversions
for high power and energy applications. He has published more than 195
technical papers and 2 books and received 17 U.S. patents. He chaired the
2000 IEEE Workshop on Computers in Power Electronics (COMPEL 2000),
2001 IEEE/DOE Future Energy Challenge, and 2005 IEEE Applied Power
Electronics Conference and Exposition (APEC 2005).
Dr. Lai was a recipient of several distinctive awards including a Tech-
nical Achievement Award in Lockheed Martin Award Night, two IEEE IAS
Conference Paper Awards, Best Paper Awards from IECON-97, IPEC-05, and
PCC-07.