Mr Makoto Hasegawa graduated Aoyama Gakuin University, in Tokyo, in 1997.

After the careers in Fuji Heavy Industries (SUBARU) and TÜV SÜD Japan, he is working for Japan Automobile Research Institute as a Functional Safety Expert from 2012 and has been involved in Automated Driving issues for several years.

JARI have been performing vehicle research and testing activities for 50 years and one of the largest organisation contributing neutral and public benefit in automotive field.

For Automated Driving technology, recently emerging as a very hot topics, JARI are conducting many research and development projects as a main player in collaboration with Academia, Industry and Government.

Mr Makoto Hasegawa will present an overview of Automated Driving technology, JARI's activities and challenges for that field.

Dr. Okumura received the B.E. degree and the M.E. degree in electrochemistry from Waseda University in 1996 and 1998 respectively, and the Ph.D. degree in hydrogen energy system from Kyusyu University in 2017.

Since 1998, he has been with Hitachi, Ltd. in research and development in the field of Energy storage.

He is currently a Department Manager in Energy Storage Research Department of Center for Technology Innovation-Materials of Hitachi, Ltd., Research & Development Group. His research interests are energy storage system & material, such as lithium ion batteries, lead acid batteries, and lithium conductive materials for application of electric power train. He is a member of the Electrochemical Society of Japan and the Solid State Ionics Society of Japan.

Electric vehicles (EVs) and renewable energy systems are politically promoted internationally with the rise of worldwide environment consciousness. As you know, Lithium ion batteries (LIBs) are key component for EVs.

Some of the issues for expansion of EVs are the cost of LIBs, as well as their energy density, safety, and degradation of them.

However, the performances and the cost of the LIBs are improving in recent years, and the condition for the wide spread of EVs and renewable energies is being complete. The objectives in this seminar are to share information about LIB technology trends especially for EV application. We will also show a Hitachi’s high energy density LIB and technologies for LIB degradation analysis.

Taku Noda was born in Osaka, Japan in 1969. He received his B.Eng., M.Eng. and Ph.D. degrees from Doshisha University, Kyoto, Japan in 1992, 1994 and 1997 respectively. In 1997, he joined Central Research Institute of Electric Power Industry (CRIEPI) in Japan. He is currently Leader of Power Quality Group, Energy Innovation Center, CRIEPI and also serves as Secretary of the IEEE PES Japan Joint Chapter and Deputy Section Editor of the IET Journal of Engineering. In the past, he held the following positions: Visiting Scientist, the University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada (2001-2002); Adjunct Professor, Doshisha University (2005- 2008); Editor, the IEEE Transactions on Power Delivery (2008-2014); and Lecturer, Shibaura Institute of Technology, Tokyo, Japan (2012-2015). He received the Best Paper Award in 2008 and the Progress Award twice in 2009 and 2016 from the IEEJ and also received the Electrical Science and Engineering Promotion Award in 2016. His research interest includes electromagnetic transient simulations and power quality analysis of power systems. He is Senior Member of the IEEE and the IEEJ.

Distribution networks have been used for distributing electrical energy to customers, and the energy flow has been thus unidirectional. As renewable energy resources and energy storage systems penetrate into the power system, the role of distribution networks, now called distribution systems, is changing into the place for exchanging electrical energy among customers who now also produce and store it. Under this environment, interference problems of control and protection algorithms used in distribution and customer equipment are likely to occur, and we have to solve those problems for developing smarter distribution systems.

Those interference problems can be viewed as dynamic power quality problems, since they degrade power quality in a dynamic interference process. In this seminar, the concept of dynamic power quality is introduced, and related research and development activities are presented.

He received the B.E. degrees in electrical engineering from the University of Ooita, Japan, in 1988.

He joined Mitsubishi Electric Corporation in 1988. In 2003, he moved to TMEIC (Toshiba Mitsubishi-Electric Industrial Systems Corporation).

Since 1988, he has been engaged in development and design of ac motor drives, UPS, wind turbine inverter, ESS inverter, solar inverter and their applications.

In order to contribute to the realization of a sustainable society, TMEIC promotes technological development of energy saving and renewable energy utilization based on power electronics technology. In recent years, renewable energy such as photovoltaic power generation has spread rapidly and globally. These inverters not only supply power stably and efficiently but also contribute to the stabilization of the power grid.
This presentation will be focused on inverter technologies for renewable energy and future prospects.

Hideyuki Hatta received his M.S. degree in physics and electronics engineering from Osaka Prefecture University in Japan in 2012.
He joined Mitsubishi Electric Corporation in 2012and has been engaged in research and design of SiC power devices at SiC Device Development Center in Advanced Technology R&D Center.

SiC power devices have undergone remarkable advancements and are expected as next generation power devices that surpass the performance of conventional Si devices.

There have been many reports on successful downsizing and energy loss reduction of power devices enabled by the superior physical properties of SiC. In recent years, “full-SiC inverters,” which consist of SiC-SBDs and SiC-MOSFETs, have been used for railway systems, indicating that SiC power devices are already in the phase of practical use. Further expansion of the application field of SiC power devices is expected in the near future.

This seminar provides a brief history of the development of SiC power devices at Mitsubishi Electric and introduces the recent work and achievements.

After graduating from Osaka Prefecture University in 1985, he joined the development department of Oki Electric Industry Co., Ltd.

He engaged in the development of electronic application systems, packaging design, production technology. From 2007 he has served as Senior Manager of the corporate production control department, Investor relations department and Chief Specialist of Corporate planning department, the corporate procurement department.

He subsequently joined NEDO, where he is in charge of the next-generation power electronics projects in 2017.

NEDO is one of the largest public research and development management organizations in Japan.

One of NEDO's most important missions is to promote technological development to realize a low carbon emission and energy-efficient society, and it has undertaken various projects to develop next-generation power electronics for renewable energy, railway system, electric vehicle, electric power system and other applications in accordance with this mission.

Recent major power electronics projects are Cross-ministerial Strategic Innovation Promotion Program(SIP) /Next-generation Power Electronics and Next-generation Power Electronics Project for a Low Carbon Emission Society.

He will talk about these projects during his presentation.