Henry Huang: Grid Modernization in Clean Energy Transition

Our national power grid has evolved to a pivotal point – not only does the grid need to provide reliable, resilient, and affordable electricity for societal prosperity and economic development, but also the grid needs to ensure a sustainable and equitable energy future, aligning with the new administrative goals of clean electricity by 2035 and fully decarbonized economy by 2050. As a result, the energy mix is shifting toward clean energy resources, and it leads to significant technical and policy challenges. Driven by the big push for deeper electrification and decarbonization, the electricity demand could double in the next two decades, and more than 80% of electricity will be generated, transferred, and/or consumed through power electronics interfaces. These include wind and solar generation, electric vehicle charging, and new building equipment. This is fundamentally changing the system dynamics as the new resources displace conventional inertia-heavy synchronous generators. But this is also bringing an opportunity for a better future grid – more responsive and flexible! To this end, the electric infrastructure needs to expand; energy storage needs to meet grid-scale application requirements; plus, new markets need to be in place to incentivize the support and services from these new resources. This talk will discuss the trends, challenges, and opportunities for grid modernization in this unprecedented clean energy transition.

Dr. Zhenyu (Henry) Huang is Laboratory Fellow at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), Richland, WA and holds a joint appointment of Research Professor at Washington State University, Pullman, WA. He is also Policy Advisor for the US Department of Energy (DOE)’s Undersecretary for Science and Innovation, leading the DOE crosscutting Grid Modernization Initiative and the White House interagency Net Zero Grid and Electrification Game Changers Initiative. He was a Technical Advisor at the DOE EERE Solar Energy Technologies Office (SETO) in 2019 – 2020. At PNNL, Dr. Huang is leading the power electronics and renewable integration portfolios and served as Deputy Sector Manager for grid research. Prior to joining PNNL in 2003, Dr. Huang conducted extensive research on power system stability and harmonics at the University of Alberta (Canada), McGill University (Canada), and the University of Hong Kong. Dr. Huang received his B. Eng. from Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, China, and Ph.D. degree from Tsinghua University, Beijing, China. His research interests include high performance computing, data analytics, and optimization and control for inverter- and renewable-dominant power and energy systems. Dr. Huang has over 200 peer-reviewed publications. He is a Fellow of IEEE and is active in several IEEE Power and Energy Society technical committees. Dr. Huang is a registered Professional Engineer in Washington State.