On November 10, 2022, the IET E&T Innovation Awards, one of the highest awards in the field of engineering technology in the world, announced the winners for year 2022 at the Bankside Hilton Hotel in London, England. The “Panoramic Information Perceptions for Intelligent Power Grids” completed by the research team of advanced electromagnetic materials and systems led by Professor He Jinliang and composed of Professor Zeng Rong, Professor Hu Jun, Professor Zhang Bo, Associate Professor Yu Zhanqing, Associate Researcher Zhuang Chijie and Associate Researcher Ouyang Yong, et al of the Department of Electrical Engineering and Applied Electronics (EEA) of Tsinghua University and Tsinghua Sichuan Energy Internet Research Institute finally won the E&T Innovation Award in the field of “Smarter World” for that it “signals a step-change for intelligent and scalable power grids.

IET E&T Innovation Award

At the ceremony for 2022 IET E&T Innovation Awards

Intelligent grids will realize the deep integration of energy flow and information flow, and bring about great changes in the operation and management mode of power systems. Distributed real-time panoramic information perception is an important cornerstone to support smart power systems. Traditional current and voltage transformers and other sensor devices based on electromagnetic induction are difficult to meet the requirement for wide-band, large-range voltage and current measurement of digital grids from DC to hundreds of MHz, microamperes to hundreds of kiloamperes, and several Vs to several MVs. In addition, the new power systems, including new energy sources, have a wide coverage, requiring the use of electrical sensors with smaller size, lower cost, and easier installation to achieve distributed wide-area monitoring.

After fifteen years, the research team of advanced electromagnetic materials and systems of Tsinghua University has successively developed a series of broadband electrical sensor devices and panoramic information perception technologies based on physical phenomena such as giant magnetoresistance effect, piezoresistive coupling effect, electrostatic piezoresistive coupling effect, and electro-optical effect, which can fully meet the demand for digitalized measurement of large power grids and solve the problem of electrical signal measurement in digitalized power systems. Its main performance has reached the best level in the world, and more than 100,000 sets of sensing equipment have been applied to online monitoring of real-time information of power systems and equipment. The wide-area distributed sensor devices, which constitute the nerve endings of the large power grid, are deeply integrated with the power grid to realize full-coverage monitoring and real-time monitoring of the steady state, harmonics, transient voltage and current of the grid, real-time monitoring and assessment of the operating state of transmission lines, power equipment and power distribution systems and real-time early warning of defects and potential failures of the core components of the equipment, providing key technical support for the safety of large power grids and the construction of smart grids.

IET (The Institution of Engineering and Technology, also known as the British Institution of Engineering and Technology) is the largest international academic organization in Europe and the second largest in the world. It is headquartered in London, England, and has offices in the United States, China, and India, and cooperate with more than 1,600 corporate partners around the world. IET,, formerly known as IEE, the British Institute of Electrical Engineers, was founded in 1871. The IET Innovation Awards, renamed into the IET E&T Innovation Award in 2020, is one of the highest-level awards in the field of engineering technology in the world. It sets 16 awards in 16 engineering fields of health, energy, communication and traffic, etc. The IET E&T Innovation Awards aim to reward outstanding innovations in the fields of science, engineering and technology, and inspire engineers and technicians to take responsibility for solving the challenges in the society. Each of the IET E&T Innovation Awards recognize researchers who are addressing issues such as climate change, energy, and diversity. All the winning projects have made positive contributions to global society. Each award is independently selected by a review committee composed of internationally renowned experts in the field, and 2022 is the 18th years of the awards. Innovation projects are collected from engineers, innovative enterprises and organizations, and academic groups around the world every year. For each field, 4-5 candidate projects are selected and announced globally on the IET official website, and 1 is finally granted the innovation award.

For more details, please refer to the IET official website:

https://eandtinnovationawards.theiet.org/