Technical Committee on Power Generation [Technical Activities]
Joseph Bentsman · IEEE Control Systems · 2016
It is a truly exciting time to be in energy generation, which is in the midst of a technological transition on a global scale. Figure 1 summarizes the recently published U.S. electricity-generation forecast [1]. The data show that coal will remain the predominant source for the time being. However, beyond 2017, the mix of renewable sources, fossil fuels, and nuclear energy needs to change dramatically to simultaneously satisfy the increasing world energy demand and mitigate the effects of global warming. For example, new clean, fossil-based energy-generation technologies, such as chemical looping, need to come online. Since these new technologies rely on active control, there is a lot of cutting-edge modeling and control research is needed in this area.