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About

About

João A. Peças Lopes (PhD) is Full Professor (Professor Catedrático) at the Faculty of Engineering of Porto University, where he teaches in the graduation and post-graduation areas.

Was for 7 years Director of the Sustainable Energy Systems PhD program at FEUP and Director of Advanced course on Sustainable Energy Systems also at FEUP.
He is Director/Member of the Board of INESC TEC.

He is Vice-Presidente of the board of the Portuguese Association for Electric Vehicles.

Prof. Peças Lopes was responsible by INESC Porto activities in several EU financed research projects, namely the project - MICROGRIDS - Large Scale Integration of Micro Generation to Low Voltage Grids  and MORE_MICROGRIDS -  Advanced Architectures and Control Concepts for More Microgrids and MERGE - Mobile Energy Resources for Grids of Electricity.

He supervised several consulting projects related with the impact analysis of the connection of wind parks in the electrical grids of Madeira, Azores,  Sal, S. Vicente and S. Tiago, in the Republic of Cabo Verde. He was the responsible for several consultancy projects related with the electrical grid impact resulting from the connection of large wind parks in Portugal.

He was also responsible for the definition of technical rules for the integration of wind power in Brazil. He coordinated also consultancy studies for the Hungarian Regulator regarding the evaluation of the integration of wind power in Hungary. He coordinates the participation of INESC Porto in the InovGrid project.

He was also the Chair of the Selection Committee of the public tender that decided about the integration of 1800 MW of wind generation in Portugal, launched by the Portuguese government in 2005.

He was member of the Executive board of the EES/UETP consortium and Chair of its course program committee.

He has served as research project evaluator for the European Commission and for governmental science organizations in Portugal, France, Italy, Greece, Finland, Danemark and Ireland.

He was for more than 4 years one of the coordinators of INESC Porto Power System Unit.

He is co-editor of the (SEGAN) Sustainable Energy Grids and Networks journal.

His main domains of research are presently related with large scale integration of renewable power sources in power systems (namely wind generation), power system dynamics, microgrids, smartmetering and integration of electric vehicles in electrical grids.

In 2012 he received the CIGRE Technical Committee Award in recogmition of his outstanding contribution to the work of the Study Committee C6 – Distribution Systems and Dispersed Generation.

Prof. Peças Lopes is an IEEE Fellow
He is member of the Power Systems Dynamic Performance Committee of the IEEE PES.

Interest
Topics
Details

Details

  • Name

    João Peças Lopes
  • Role

    TEC4 Coordinator
  • Since

    01st March 1989
146
Publications

2026

Low ripple adaptive lead lag current controlled interleaved buck converter for PEM hydrogen electrolyzers

Authors
Elhawash, AM; Hussein, AS; Araújo, RE; Lopes, JAP;

Publication
CONTROL ENGINEERING PRACTICE

Abstract
The polarization curve characteristics of proton exchange membrane (PEM) hydrogen electrolyzers lead to large variations in the equivalent load impedance over the operating current range. This results in a varying closed-loop system time response when traditional fixed-gain PI controllers are employed. In this work, the design and experimental validation of a 3-phase interleaved buck converter controlled via a proposed adaptive lead-lag current control strategy for a PEM hydrogen electrolyzer load is presented. The incremental load conductance method is used to obtain a control-oriented model of the converter-electrolyzer system, enabling real-time calculation of controller parameters via pole-zero cancellation and user-specified transient performance. A laboratory prototype is implemented to experimentally verify the approach under step-load changes, ramp-load changes, and 50% input voltage sag conditions. The results show less than 1% current ripple, identical transient performance over the entire operating range, and improved disturbance ride-through performance compared to a traditional PI controller. The proposed approach offers a viable and robust control solution for high-current PEM electrolyzer applications.

2026

Degradation-Aware Planning of Shared Battery Energy Storage Systems for Coordinated Transmission and Distribution System Operation

Authors
Simões, M; Peças Lopes, J; Soares, FJ;

Publication

Abstract
Energy Storage Systems (ESSs) are an important source of flexibility in power systems with high penetration of Renewable Energy Sources (RESs). When installed at transmission-distribution interface nodes, shared ESSs can support both Transmission System Operators (TSOs) and Distribution System Operators (DSOs), but their long-term planning remains challenging because investment decisions depend on coordinated operation under uncertainty and battery degradation over time. This paper proposes a degradation-aware planning framework for shared battery ESSs in coordinated TSO-DSO operation. The problem is formulated as a bi-level stochastic optimization model in which the upper level determines siting, sizing, and staged investment decisions under investment-cost uncertainty, while the lower level evaluates these decisions through coordinated system operation. To preserve tractability, the framework combines Benders' decomposition for long-term planning with an Alternating Direction Method of Multipliers (ADMM)-based decentralized coordination mechanism for short-term operation. The framework is evaluated on integrated IEEE transmission-distribution test systems over a 15-year planning horizon. Relative to uncoordinated operation, coordinated operation with shared ESSs reduces operating costs by up to 18.25% and RES curtailment by up to 92.16% in the later years of the planning horizon, while eliminating voltage violations. The results also show that degradation materially affects ESS valuation and that temporal discretization can influence siting and sizing decisions.

2025

Grid forming converter sizing strategies for black start operation in islanded offshore wind farms

Authors
Prakash, P; Lopes, JP; Silva, B;

Publication
SUSTAINABLE ENERGY GRIDS & NETWORKS

Abstract
The rapid expansion of offshore wind farms and the development of energy islands for green hydrogen production have introduced futuristic off-grid systems. These systems can experience total shutdowns, necessitating black start solutions to ensure reliable restoration capabilities for isolated offshore wind farms. This paper investigates a grid-forming converter sizing strategy to enable black start capabilities in off-grid offshore wind farms. The study evaluates the impact of different energization strategies on battery energy storage system (BESS) sizing, focusing on soft energization with droop control in wind turbines and electrolyzers, the effects of wind turbine ramp rates on BESS requirements, and the role of switchable shunt reactors at the offshore substation for reactive power management. A comparative analysis is conducted between soft + hard and pure soft energization sequences to assess their impact on BESS converter sizing. Results demonstrate that the combined soft + hard energization strategy significantly reduces BESS converter size, offering a more cost-effective black start solution compared to pure soft energization.

2025

Frequency support from PEM hydrogen electrolysers using Power-Hardware-in-the-Loop validation

Authors
Elhawash, AM; Araújo, RE; Lopes, JAP;

Publication
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF HYDROGEN ENERGY

Abstract
Maintaining frequency stability is one of the biggest challenges facing future power systems, due to the increasing penetration levels of inverter-based renewable resources. This investigation experimentally validates the frequency provision capabilities of a real Polymer Electrolyte Membrane (PEM) hydrogen electrolyser (HE) using a power hardware-in-the-loop (PHIL) setup. The PHIL consists of a custom 3-level interleaved buck converter and a hardware platform for real-time control of the converter and conducting grid simulation, associated with the modelling of the future Iberian Peninsula (IP) and Continental Europe (CE) systems. The investigation had the aim of validating earlier simulation work and testing new responses from the electrolyser when providing different frequency services at different provision volumes. The experimental results corroborate earlier simulation results and capture extra electrolyser dynamics as the double-layer capacitance effect, which was absent in the simulations. Frequency Containment Reserve (FCR) and Fast Frequency Response (FFR) were provided successfully from the HE at different provision percentages, enhancing the nadir and the rate of change of frequency (RoCoF) in the power system when facing a large disturbance compared to conventional support only. The results verify that HE can surely contribute to frequency services, paving the way for future grid support studies beyond simulations.

2025

Evolving Symbolic Model for Dynamic Security Assessment in Power Systems

Authors
Fernandes, FS; Bessa, RJ; Lopes, JP;

Publication
JOURNAL OF MODERN POWER SYSTEMS AND CLEAN ENERGY

Abstract
In a high-risk sector, such as power system, transparency and interpretability are key principles for effectively deploying artificial intelligence (AI) in control rooms. Therefore, this paper proposes a novel methodology, the evolving symbolic model (ESM), which is dedicated to generating highly interpretable data-driven models for dynamic security assessment (DSA), namely in system security classification (SC) and the definition of preventive control actions. The ESM uses simulated annealing for a data-driven evolution of a symbolic model template, enabling different cooperative learning schemes between humans and AI. The Madeira Island power system is used to validate the application of the ESM for DSA. The results show that the ESM has a classification accuracy comparable to pruned decision trees (DTs) while boasting higher global inter-pretability. Moreover, the ESM outperforms an operator-defined expert system and an artificial neural network in defining preventive control actions.