“The era of dependence on fossil fuels is coming to an end. For mankind to survive, we have to resort to maximum utilization of renewable sources of energy, without causing detrimental effect to the environment,” stated Dr. Chandramohan, Chairman, Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering at the Amritapuri campus.
Dr. Chandramohan was addressing delegates during the inaugural ceremony of the National Conference on Technological Advancements in Power and Energy (TAP Energy).
The conference organized during July 4 – 6, 2013, included a keynote address by Dr. V. K. Damodaran, Director-General, International Non Governmental Cooperation Organization for Renewable Energy (INGCORE).
Speaking on technologies to power the future, he also had encouraging remarks for Amrita. “This institution has been created to make a difference in the field of education and become a model for academic institutions elsewhere,” he noted.
Expert talks, technical paper presentations and panel discussions marked the rest of the conference proceedings.
A panel discussion on the last day examined the role of power electronics in distributed power generation.
Distinguished panelists including Amrita professors, Sasi K. K., Isha T. B. and Kanakasabapathy P. noted the role distributed generation will have to play an important role in the future, wherein electricity would be generated from many smaller energy sources and fed into the grid.
“If we switch over from conventional generation to distributed generation, the challenge is that we will need to change the network, operation and control strategies,” panelists pointed out.
Distributed generation can be used most efficiently with renewable energies and also the relatively lesser polluting fossil fuels, such as natural gas. But energy transfer needs power electronics.
“Power electronics engineers will need to understand very large-scale integration, that is the process of creating integrated circuits by combining thousands of transistors into a single chip,” panel members noted.
Over 70 research papers were received from all over India. These were reviewed by peer experts in two rounds. About 32 papers were chosen for presentations on several research topics including power quality and smart grid technologies.
Pre-conference sessions addressed challenges in maintaining power quality in renewable energy systems and energy management considerations in industrial load scenarios. Research scholars attending were provided with insights into potential research problems.
“It was a good experience to be a part of such an innovative technical conference; valuable insights were received,” shared Ajay Ingle, MTech student at Fr. C. Rodrigues Institute of Technology, Mumbai.
“I felt very lucky to be able to learn so many new things. Also the underlying theme of many expert talks was the contribution we can make to society. Pre-conference sessions were also very good,” commented Chidanand, PhD scholar working in Smart Grids at Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham.
July 12, 2013
School of Engineering, Amritapuri
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