As part of IEEE Connecting Experts program, Sertac Bayhan, Senior Scientist at the Qatar Environment and Energy Research Institute to talk about microgrids, including the current status and also future opportunities. The technical talk entitled “Microgrids: The Pathway to Smart and Cleaner Energy Future” was scheduled on June 28 at 17:00 UTC. The talk was co-organized with IEEE Region 8 and IEEE Young Professionals Turkey Section.

Dr. Bayhan’s talk primarily focused on design consideration of microgrids, including the current status and also future opportunities of renewables, energy storages, power electronics, microgrid control techniques, and the challenges of integrating microgrids into the electricity grid.

Dr. Bayhan stated “Over the last few decades, electrical energy systems have become overstrained and faced various stressed conditions more often because of increased electricity demand and the adaptation of various fluctuating renewable energy resources. Undoubtedly, at some point within the next decade, intensive electricity demand will exceed total electricity generation and transmission capacity, which will force decision makers to build new plants and put major changes in the whole grid infrastructure. Such solutions will not be practical considering economic, safety, and environmental concerns. Therefore, the traditional utility grid has to experience an inclusive transformation to avoid a prospective crisis with existing power plants and available infrastructure. For these reasons, microgrids play an important role to meet future electricity demands without significant investment in new power plants.”