João Fernandes of IDMEC, Instituto Superior Tecnico

The “2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development” has identified the electrification of the transportation system as a key strategy to combat environmental degradation. In particular, for the aviation sector, the EU, in its “Flightpath 2050: Europe’s Vision for Aviation report”, set the goals for reducing CO2, NOx, and noise emissions by 75%, 90%, and 65%, respectively, by 2050. However, nowadays conventional electrical machines still lack the power/torque density required for these applications. 

High-temperature superconductors (HTS) may be a potential solution to expand the electrification of the transportation system. While HTS technology still faces today technical challenges that limit their widespread use for many electric applications, it has matured significantly in recent years, making it important to understand their potential advantages and disadvantages. This webinar will provide key insights into superconducting technology for electric power systems and, especially, for electrical machines. Their physical phenomena are explained, from a macroscopic point of view, for DC and AC operation, and a superconducting induction machine developed under the project SCIMA/FCT will be presented.  

This tutorial is for students, industry professionals and researchers within the area of electrical engineering who are not familiar with superconducting technology. 

Biography:

·        João Filipe Pereira Fernandes is Associate Professor at Instituto Superior Técnico, University of Lisbon and researcher at IDMEC.

He received the M.Sc. and the Ph.D. degrees in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Instituto Superior Técnico (IST), University of Lisbon, Portugal, in 2011 and 2017, respectively. From 2010 to 2013, he was managing partner and researcher at the startup Emove Innovative Technologies, Lda, Portugal, in the area of wave energy. From 2011 to 2013, he was an electrical engineering at Efacec Engenharia, Portugal, in the field of co-generation electrical power plants. Since 2018, he has been with Instituto Superior Técnico in the Electrical and Computers Engineering Department and a researcher at the research center IDMEC/LAETA. He is Associate Professor since 2026.

His research work aims to expand the current limits of electrical machines, using emerging advanced electromagnetic materials, such as superconductors, and cryogenic cooling, and to model and optimize the operation and design of electrical machines for multidisciplinary applications. He is currently Associate Editor of IEEE trans. on Energy Conversion and IET Electric Power Applications, and Vice-chair of the IEEE Power and Energy Society Portugal Section. He is currently PI of the national project SCIMA on superconducting electrical machines and of the international project iS4ASV from Frontex.