June 21, 2013, HFH 4164

The devastating attack of the earthquake and subsequent tsunami of March 11, 2011, completely changed the basic idea about the fail-safe concept of electric power supply. We are now confronted with the question how our daily lives can sustain in the face of a sudden power blackout. Not only some common cases like transportation systems, hospitals, but also shops, supermarkets, convenience shops and other premises should have some means of a power backup.  One common way of dealing with this problem is to have electric batteries installed in a microgrid system, and let them replace the utility grid when power outage occurs. This talk proposes a new control scheme based on H-infinity control for a battery power supply system, and also point out misunderstandings that seem to be common to power electronics. We will also review power balancing in micorgrids as needed.

Yutaka Yamamoto received his B. S. and M. S. degrees in engineering from Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan in 1972 and 1974, respectively, and the M. S. and Ph. D. degree in mathematics from the University of Florida, in 1976 and 1978, respectively.  From 1978 to 1987 he was with Department of Applied Mathematics and Physics, Kyoto University.  In 1987 he joined the Department of Applied Systems Science as an Associate Professor, and became a professor in 1997.  He is currently a professor at the Department of Applied Analysis and Complex Dynamical Systems, Graduate School of Informatics of Kyoto University. His research and teaching interests are in realization and robust control of distributed parameter systems, learning control systems, and sampled-data systems, its application to digital signal processing, with emphasis on sound and image processing. 

Dr. Yamamoto received Sawaragi memorial paper award in 1985, outstanding paper award of SICE in 1987 and in 1997, the best author award of SICE in 1990 and in 2000, the George S. Axelby Outstanding Paper Award in 1996, and theCommendation for Science and Technology by the Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology Prizes for Science of Technology in 2007. He received the IEEE Control Systems Society Distinguished Member Award in 2009, and the Transition to Practice Award of the Control Systems Society in 2012, as well as the ISCIE Best Industrial Paper Award in 2009.  He is a Fellow of the IEEE and SICE. 

He is currently President of the IEEE Control Systems Society.  He has served as vice President for Technical Activities of the CSS for 2005-2006, and as vice President for Publication Activities for 2007-2008.  He was an associate editor of the IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control, Automatica, Systems and Control Letters, and is currently an associate editor of and
Mathematics of Control, Signals and Systems.  He has served as a Senior Editor for the IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control for 2010-2011. He also served as an organizing committee member of 35th CDC in 1996, MTNS '91 in Kobe, and as a member of program committees of several CDC's.  He was the chair of the Steering Committee of MTNS, served as General Chair of MTNS 2006. He was a past President of ISCIE of Japan.