On November 24th, we celebrated the 104th Faculty's Day. Pretty much all the speakers, including Julije Domac, Tomislav Okroša and Ivo Milatić emphasized the importance of the energy sector, so we know we are on the right track!

As a part of the celebration, the Faculty (FER) gave awards to professors, associates and students who were particularly successful in their research and their studies in academic year 2022/2023. 🎖 🏆

Our former students Karlo Kobeščak and Filip Grebenar were awarded the Bronze Plaque Josip Lončar for outstanding results during their master's studies. Additionally, Filip won two more awards, the INETEC award for outstanding results during his study and the award given by the Mikec Foundation for the best master's thesis.

The newest member of our department, research assistant Lovro Lukač, won the Werner von Siemens award for the best student's research work.

Science Award for the results in research and innovation in the last two years was given to our postdoctoral researcher Tomislav Antić.
Karlo Šepetanc won the Franjo Luetić award for the results of their doctoral studies in the field of power engineering. He was also one of the recipients of the Silver Plaque Josip Lončar for the best doctoral thesis, along with Tomislav Baškarad.

Finally, our professor Davor Grgić won the Golden Plaque Josip Lončar, as an award for everything he did for our department, Faculty and University.

We congratulate and are very proud of all the awardees! We are glad that our hard work is being noticed, which gives us even more momentum and enthusiasm for research and teaching activities in the coming years. 🤗

Our professor Igor Kuzle, assistant Nikolina Čović and senior assistant Tomislav Baškarad attended the IEEE PES ISGT Europe 2023 conference organized by IEEE Power & Energy Society and Université Grenoble Alpes in Grenoble, France from the 23rd until 26th October. This year's conference theme was "Powering solutions for decarbonized and resilient future smart grids" to which Nikolina and Tomislav contributed with papers on hydrogen integration to power systems ("The Impact of Providing Balancing Services with Electrolyzers on Power and Hydrogen Balancing Responsible Groups") and power system dynamics ("Multi-area Power System Frequency Nadir Prediction").
 
During the conference's gala dinner, professor Kuzle gave a speech in which he announced that next year's ISGT Europe conference will be held in Dubrovnik, Croatia. #isgtEurope2024

And that conferences can be fun, you can see from the attached picture! 😁

On the occasion of the celebrations of the 355th academic year and the Day of the University of Zagreb at the solemn session of the Senate, our Professor Igor Kuzle received the plaque and medal 🏅 "Fran Bošnjaković", the highest university award for technical sciences for the achieved scientific results and promotion of the scientific discipline and profession, as well as for an exceptional contribution to the transfer of knowledge and education of young experts in the field of technical sciences.

Congratulations! 👏

HRO CIGRE conference is the biggest conference in Croatia that gathers people from all segments of the energy sector. This year, it was held 5th-8th November in Šibenik, with more than 1000 attendees including Mr. Philippe ADAM, the general secretary of international CIGRE, and Laurie-Anne Clement Charpentier, president of French Women in Energy network, as special guests. Traditionally, our department contributed with many papers – 12 in total were prepared and presented during technical sessions by Božidar Filipović-Grčić, Tomislav Capuder, Bojan Franc, Viktor Milardić, Franjo Vuković, Nina Stipetić, Mirna Gržanić, Tomislav Antić, Nikolina Čović, Vedran Bobanac, Matija Kostelac, Matko Mesar and Marija Miletić.

Aside from technical sessions, presentations and booths, our employees got the chance to network and broaden their knowledge by exchanging their experience with others in the never-so vastly emerging and dynamically changing energy sector, and to connect with peers from the industry. A special session was devoted to young engineers, the NGN session, and it was organized and led by our colleagues - Božidar Filipović-Grčić and Nina Stipetić. We are happy that our young colleagues from TenneT TSO B.V., The Netherlands and SuperGrid Institute, France could attend this session as invited speakers. 

The students’ organisation KSET (SS FER) organised a two-day excursion to various electrical power facilities and organisations with support from our department and IEEE PES Croatia Section. The trip attracted students from all academic levels, from the first to the final year at FER. For the younger participants, this excursion served as an enlightening opportunity to explore the intricacies of power engineering, potentially aiding them in their academic and career decisions, while for the more senior students in attendance, the trip was a valuable exercise in bridging the gap between theory and practice.

We hereby invite you to the workshop of the project "Photovoltaic system for production of electricity for own needs in network operation SE-FER-005 - Phase 1 (SOLAR005)" of the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing. The project is funded by Iceland, Liechtenstein, and Norway through the Financial Mechanism of the European Economic Area (EEA) 2014–2021, with national co-financing from the Republic of Croatia under the "Energy and Climate Change" Program.

The workshop will be held on Tuesday, November 7, 2023, beginning at 10:00 AM. It will start at the Hotel Frankopan in Ogulin (address: I.G. Kovačića 1) in the Conference hall. In addition to the presentation of project activities and the promotion of solar energy as a renewable energy source, the event will include visits to power generating facilities and a lunch with a social gathering. Transportation between venues will be provided.

The workshop is free and open to all interested parties, and we kindly ask that you arrive at the workshop approximately 15 minutes before the scheduled start for registration.

Working together for a green Europe || More information: www.eeagrants.hr ||

Our assistant Sara Raos, participated in 2023 International Conference on Power and Renewable Energy Engineering (PREE 2023) held in Tokyo, Japan from 20 to 22 October 2023. PREE 2023 was co-sponsored by Tokai University, Japan, IEEE and IEEE Power & Energy Society, technical supported by Kumamoto University, JAPAN, American University of Sharjah, UAE, Auckland University of Technology, New Zealand and National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University, Taiwan. The conference aimed to promote quality research and real-world impact in an atmosphere of true international cooperation between scientists and engineers.

Sara presented the paper titled “Methodology for Oil-to-Water Conversion of Mature Oil Fields and Decision Support Tool”. Her presentation received the award for one of the best papers and oral presentations of the PREE 2023 conference. Bravo Sara! 🤗

Do you know that famous Chinese proverb: "When you teach someone, both teacher and student benefit."? Well our researchers, Bojana Barać, Terezija Matijašević, Tomislav Antić and Matija Kostelac certainly do.

Between October 12 and 18, at the Tsinghua University, they participated in the organized PhD days thanks to the Department of Electrical Engineering and prof. Ning Zhang.

Our researches presented their research directions and activities on the following topics:

⚡ On the challenges and modeling solutions for DER-rich unbalanced distribution networks, Tomislav Antić
⚡ Models of flexible and decarbonized multi-energy industry facilities , Matija Kostelac
⚡ Smart meter data: help or obstacle in the planning and operation of distribution networks?, Terezija Matijašević
⚡ On the control, operation, and resilience in low inertial power systems, Bojana Barać
 
This was an excellent opportunity to make new acquaintances, exchange experiences with other researchers, broaden horizons, and learn about new cultures. Their learning goes to the extent that they were introduced to one of the seven wonders of the world - the Great Wall of China!
 
We would like to extend our gratitude to prof. Zhang, his team, and the whole Department of Electrical Engineering for giving such warm hospitality to our researchers. We hope to meet in Zagreb in the near future! 😊

In the period October 9-11, 2023, the Croatian Academy of Engineering hosted the CAETS (International Council of Academies of Engineering and Technological Sciences) Annual Meeting in Zagreb. CAETS is an independent international organization of 30 engineering and technological sciences academies. Each year, a conference considered as essential for the dissemination of technology within the international engineering community is organized. The topic of this year’s annual meeting in Zagreb was eMobility.

On the first day of the meeting, our Prof. Zeljko Tomsic hosted the “Session on Batteries – the core technology”. After a plenary talk by Dr. Kai _Wu, Prof. Tomšić moderated the #session with the #panelists Tony Harper FREng, Prof. Zoran Mandic, and Prof. Mario Vasak.

On the other hand, our Prof. Hrvoje Pandzic was a panelist in the “Session on Electrification of transport and integration with energy systems”. The session was hosted by Prof. Neven Duic, while the other panelists were Dr. Dr Katherine Woodthorpe AO FTSE FAICD, Prof. Joeri Van Mierlo and Prof. Ulrich Wagner.

We find the Annual Meeting to be a great success, with many interesting talks, debates and information on the ongoing research and industry activities in the field of eMobility. All the panels and talks were very systematic, well organized, insightful and inspirational. We are looking forward to the next year’s event in July in Helsinki!

Our professor Igor Kuzle participated in the Poslovni dnevnik podcast on the topic Without Sustainable Transport There is no Sustainable Economy. The podcast is part of a regular series dedicated to the Green Economy.

He also gave an interview to Poslovni dnevnik on the topic of smart grids, where he talked about the challenges of the modern power system, the problems and issues in integrating renewable energy sources and technologies that enable high share of RES in the power system. He presented innovative solutions from our research laboratory (SGLab - Smart Grid Laboratory) and briefly described the research and industrial projects of the SGLab.