Download Stephen Ion Finney

Stephen Jon Finney graduated with a Master’s degree in
Electrical and Electronic Engineering from Loughborough
University in 1988. He worked for the (U.K) Electricity Council
research Centre Laboratories before joining the Power Electronics
research team at Heriot-Watt University in 1990, obtaining his PhD
in 1994. In 2005 he transferred to the University of Strathclyde
where he contributed to the formation of the power electronics,
drives and energy conversion group. This research group now
includes 4 academic staff, five postdoctoral research fellows and 14
postgraduate researchers. The group’s research spans power
semiconductor devices, circuits and system level applications. His
work in the area of power electronics has resulted in the supervision 15 PhD completions and
publication of over 150 research papers with over 30 in IEEE Transactions.
During his time at Strathclyde Professor Finney has been responsible for developing research
into the application of power electronic systems energy systems. Work in this field includes
HVDC transmission, Multi-terminal HVDC, Renewable generator interface and Energy
collection architectures. The group recently completed work on the European Union funded
‘Twenties’ program, a multi-partner project which investigated the use of HVDC for the
integration of large scale wind generation. This work will be extended through a number of
successor projects focusing on overcoming technical barriers to HVDC networks offshore
wind integration.
Besides HVDC Professor Finney’s team is involved in a broad range of Power Electronics
research which include work on High Voltage IGBT Modules and advanced gate drives and
U.K China Collaboration on Power Electronic Devices for the Network Integration of
Electric Vehicles.
Contact information:
Professor at University of Strathclyde, UK
e-mail: [email protected]
Lecture topic
There is a growing trend to extend the use of power electronics into the realms of utility scale
power transfer. However, extending the use of power electronics to these high power high
voltage applications is fraught with difficulty and simple scaling of low voltage power
electronics will not suffice.
Utility scale power electronics such as HVDC requires operating voltages many times beyond
the ratings of today’s semiconductors devices. Even if advances in device technology result
in dramatic increases in achievable blocking voltage, constraints imposed by switching speed,
losses and EMI will limit the use of conventional power topologies.
Multi-level converter topologies offer a potential solution for utility scale DC-AC conversion.
These topologies which allow device stress to be shared at circuit level whist decoupling
device switching frequency from AC power quality. This has resulted in significant gains in
system efficiency which are achieved at the expense of circuit and control complexity.
This presentation will look at the development of high voltage converters from early tow
level series connected options though to the range of modular topologies that are being
developed for high capacity HVDC.
Presentation will last approximately two hours.