Keynotes


Prof. Dr. Ahmed F. Zobaa
Brunel University London, UK
(DSc, FIET, FEI, FCIBSE, FIMechE, FAAS, SMIEEE)

Biography: Ahmed F. Zobaa received his BSc (Hons), MSc, and PhD degrees in Electrical Power & Machines from Cairo University, Egypt, in 1992, 1997, and 2002, respectively. He received his Postgraduate Certificate in Academic Practice from University of Exeter, UK, in 2010, and his Doctoral of Science from Brunel University London, UK, in 2017. He was an Instructor from 1992–1997, a Teaching Assistant from 1997–2002, and an Assistant Professor from 2002–2007 at Cairo University, Egypt. From 2007 to 2010, he was a Senior Lecturer in renewable energy at University of Exeter, UK. From 2010 to 2019, he was a Senior Lecturer in power systems at Brunel University London, UK. He is currently a Reader in electrical and power engineering at Brunel University London, UK. His main areas of expertise include power quality, (marine) renewable energy, smart grids, energy efficiency, and lighting applications.
Dr Zobaa is an Executive Editor for the International Journal of Renewable Energy Technology and an Executive Editor-in-Chief for Technology and Economics of Smart Grids and Sustainable Energy. He is also an Editorial Board member, Editor, Associate Editor, and Editorial Advisory Board member for many international journals. He is a registered Chartered Engineer, Chartered Energy Engineer, European Engineer, and International Professional Engineer. He is also a registered member of the Engineering Council, UK; the Egypt Syndicate of Engineers; and the Egyptian Society of Engineers. He is a Senior Fellow of Higher Education Academy, UK; Fellow of the Institution of Engineering and Technology, Energy Institute, UK, Chartered Institution of Building Services Engineers, UK, Institution of Mechanical Engineers, UK, The Royal Society of Arts, UK, The African Academy of Sciences, and Chartered Institute of Educational Assessors, UK. He is a senior member of the IEEE.

Title: Hydrogen in Electricity’s Future

Abstract: From the current global energy map, coal leads electricity production with more than 37%, natural gas with 24%, petroleum with about 3% renewable energies with more than 26%, and nuclear energy with 10%.
Significant potential for further expansion of renewable energies combined with concerns about potential future natural gas supplies leads to a focus on hydrogen from electrolysis (green hydrogen) rather than from natural gas with carbon capture and storage (“blue” hydrogen).
As of 2020, most hydrogen (∼95%) is produced from fossil fuels, but hydrogen produced from renewables has huge potential. To significantly contribute to the clean energy transition, “green hydrogen” must be produced at scale or blended into existing gas infrastructure reducing carbon emissions. Hydrogen can also be used for seasonal energy storage, industry decarbonisation and a renewable-powered future.
This talk will highlight how hydrogen will help in replacing fossil fuels in the future.



Prof. Dr. Dimitrios Karamanis
University of Patras, Greece

Biography: Dimitrios Karamanisis professor of Alternative Energy Sources at University of Patras. His research interest started with the development of appropriate countermeasures for the mitigation of the severe environmental consequences of the Chernobyl accident and followed by cross section measurements in the thorium fuel cycle for energy production and waste incineration. Expanded to the study of wind and solar energy systems in the last fifteen years and currently research focused on solar cooling of buildings and the integration of photovoltaics in buildings for electricity production towards carbon neutral cities. By participating in national and international research programs as a scientific coordinator and researcher, he has published more than 110 scientific papers in scientific journals, patents and book chapters with >3000 citations and h-index 35 (Scopus). Prof. Karamanis teaches courses in the subject of renewable energy sources and their applications since 2006 in Departments of the Universities of Ioannina and Patras.

Title: Building Integrated Photovoltaics: From sufficiency to sharing towards carbon neutral cities

Abstract: To implement Paris agreement and keep the mean temperature increase lower than 1.5°C compared to preindustrial levels, deep decarbonization is required with the utilization of renewable energy sources. The integration of renewables in buildings is a key component in the proposed actions of WGIII and a step forward to distributed energy systems with high contribution from buildings, becoming prosumers. Since the building structure is the interface between humans and their natural environment, sustainable development requires a rethinking of the photovoltaics integration in harmony to local environmental and bioclimatic conditions. The necessity of climate crisis mitigation points towards moving beyond the self-sufficient and self-consumption concepts into positive energy sharing within local communities. In this context, the SERAS concept (sufficiency, efficiency, renewables and sharing) that we recently proposed in BIPV deployment will be presented and discussed towards carbon neutral cities.



Prof. Dr. Jose Manuel Lopez-Guede
University of the Basque Country, Spain

Biography: Jose Manuel Lopez-Guede received the M.Sc. degree in 1999 and the Ph.D. degree in 2012, both in Computer Engineering at the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU), Spain. He got 3 investigation grants, and from 2000 to 2004 he worked at an Industrial Informatics company. Since 2004 he is working at University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU), Spain. His current position is Assoc. Prof. with the Systems Engineering and Automatic Control Department at the Faculty of Engineering Vitoria-Gasteiz, Spain. From 2010 to 2018, he has been the Coordinator of the Bachelor in Industrial Electronic Engineering and Automatics degree of the Basque Country University, and Vicedean from January 2018 to January 2020. He also was advisor at the National Distance Education University of Spain. His teaching areas are Electronics and Computer Science, and he has been the Coordinator of 4 granted Projects in Educational Innovation and participad as collaborator in 2 more projects. He participated in an Erasmus KA2 project from 2015 to 2018 as coordinator in Spain. He has participated in Erasmus actions (2012, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017) and has been investigator in 30 competitive projects. He is coauthor of more than 300 papers, >35 in the field of Educational Innovation and the remaining in specific research areas: he has >70 SCI JCR publications, >40 other journals and >180 chapters and conferences, >15 invited talks and >15 plenary talks. He as belonged to >15 organizing committees of several international conferences and to more than 15 scientific committees. His research interests are robotics and computational intelligence techniques applied to different areas as Energy, Robotics, etc.

Title: Teorical and empirical modeling

Abstract: Modeling complex systems is still an open issue is many fields, and among them, in the scope of energy. A good modeling provides accurate simulations that can help to pose, design and implement appropriate control algorithms, which optimize the performance of the physical elements. However, sometimes it is not clear that the first principle based modeling provides accurate enough results, and the empirical modeling becomes a promising technique to deal with complex systems. In this keynote talk a number of first principle models will be reviewed and the empirical modeling will be presented for a real case.