The global vision of smart and sustainable cities is greatly restricted by the effect of electromagnetic interference (EMI) which occurs through the interaction of electrical power with information technology and communication equipment. Nowadays, electrical power systems of all sizes and capacities are becoming smart. This is to provide the improvements in efficiency and flexibility required by modern usage. It is also an important part of the smart cities concept. Related to this, we have to consider a multitude of energy suppliers and users with rapid variations, for instance during switching, while at the same time more power line communication systems are being used for communication, control and monitoring. Many cases of electromagnetic interference from power electronic devices have been reported including communication and non-communication equipment.

Furthermore, due to the absence of EMC civil standard on the frequency 2kHz – 150 kHz, most of the commercial off the shelf (COTS) device use this frequency range as a garbage band for their switching frequencies. Nowadays, this issue becomes crucial due to the application of COTS-based devices is increasing rapidly. Two key technological enablers for smart power systems are electrical power converters and electronic communications. These two technologies are very different and there is very few research study on EMC that can present comprehensive results. To overcome this issue, the Smart Cities EMC Network for Training (SCENT) project and the APEMC 2021 committee has made a collaboration to held a “SCENT: EMC in Smart Cities via Power Electronics”. The APEMC 2021 SCENT special session will present several latest examples of EMI cases in the public land power distribution system such as hospital and residential and also a case in islanded power distribution system such as a ship. In this session, a novel concept of multi-channel fast digitisers, which will enable to characterize equipment in Voltage-Current (V-I) in the time-frequency domain to shows the non-linear effects in load (or supply) impedance which is not possible with a conventional single-channel direct-conversion or (super)-heterodyne receivers will be presented. Furthermore, this SCENT special session will also provide several applicable solutions to mitigate EMI at the smart grid via power electronics.

The APEMC 2021 event will be held on 27-30 September 2021 at Bali island, a paradise in Indonesia. If you interested to join our session please visit https://apemc2021.org for further information.