Ubaid Ahmad

PhD Programme: Technologies for Nanosystems, Bioengineering and Energy
Research group: GAEI – Grup d'Automàtica i Electrònica Industrial
Supervisors: Roberto Giral Castillón & Carlos Olalla Martínez

Bio

Ubaid Ahmad received the BSc degree in Electrical Engineering from University of Engineering and Technology Peshawar, Pakistan, in 2015, and the MSc degree in Energy Engineering (Majoring in Power Electronics) from Kyungpook National University (KNU), South Korea, in 2019. From August 2019 to August 2021, he was a Research Assistant at the Power Electronics and Energy Conversion Laboratory (PEEC Lab.) at the Department of Energy Engineering. He is now enrolled as a Ph.D. candidate in the project "Distributed Power Electronics Architectures for Photovoltaic Power Plants" at the Department d'Enginyeria Electronica i Automatica at the Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Spain. His current research interests include high-frequency magnetic design, resonant power conversion, and modeling and control of power converters for photovoltaic power plants and bipolar dc distribution system. Mr. Ahmad was a recipient of scholarships from National ICT R&D Fund Pakistan, Brain Korea (BK-21) at KNU, and MSCA at URV.

Project: Distributed Power Electronics Architectures for Photovoltaic Power Plants

In photovoltaics (PV), the big challenge is to built and maintain PV installations in a cost-efficient way. Cutting-down the cost of PV modules has improved the competitiveness of this renewable energy, but we are still very far away from what it is achievable. Some of the present issues in conventional PV systems are related to: lack of scalability, large-impact of mismatch, inability to mitigate intermittency, and poor reliability of central inverters. This project proposes as main objective the development of new, smart photovoltaic (PV) modules, which will address these issues. These new PV modules will be enhanced thanks to the use of power electronics converters that are integrated at submodule level in PV modules. Enhanced PV modules will outperform current devices in terms of power delivery, immunity to changing conditions or mismatch, reliability, cost and durability, improving the capabilities of residential,  commercial and utility-scale PV systems.