Xiao-Ping Zhang is a Professor of Electrical Power Systems, Director of Smart Grid, Birmingham Energy Institute, and Co-Director of Birmingham Energy Storage Centre sponsored by UK, and Head of the Electrical Power & Control Systems Group

Professor Zhang has been conducting active research in the fields of Energy Union, Global Power & Energy Internet, Super Power Grids, Smart Grids, modelling and control of FACTS and HVDC, renewable generation (wind and wave) control, integration of EVs into power grids, energy markets & game theory applications, smart metering, distributed energy management and services for homes and buildings and wide area grid awareness. He has received major grants from UK Government Science City Initiative, FP7 EU Smart Energy Network (Smart Grid) Programme, EPSRC and Industry etc. In 2010, he initiated the UK-China Smart Grid Workshop series, which has led to 13 UK-China joint research projects on smart grid, electric vehicles and energy storage.

In June 2011, he proposed the concept of “Global Power & Energy Internet” in the CIGRE Workshop held at the University of Birmingham. He pioneered the concept of “Energy Union”, which has been adopted by European Commission. He also pioneered the vision and concept of Midlands as the UK’s “Energy Valley” where this became true with the establishment of UK’s Energy Research Accelerator and UK’s Energy Systems Catapult in the region.

He co-authored 5 books (including the monograph “Flexible AC Transmission Systems: Modelling and Control”, Springer 2006/2012, and “Restructured Electric Power Systems: Analysis of Electricity Markets with Equilibrium Models”, IEEE Press/Wiley in 2010), 100+ journal papers and 150+ conference papers. He was an Alexander-von-Humboldt Fellow in 1999/2000. He is an IEEE PES Distinguished Lecturer on HVDC, FACTS and Wave Energy Generation. He was elected as a Foreign Fellow of Chinese Society for Electrical Engineering (CSEE), among the 10 CSEE’s first batch of Foreign Fellows in 2019. Prof Zhang has been named an IEEE Fellow for his contributions to “modeling and control of high-voltage DC and AC transmission systems.”

Professor Zhang is Chair of the IEEE WG on Test Systems for Economic Analysis and also Secretary of IFAC Technical Committee on Power and Energy Systems Control. He is advisor to the IEEE PES UK & Ireland Chapter. He published the visionary article on Smart Energy Community for Smart Cities in the IEEE Smart City News Letter in 2018.

He is co-founder of the UK-China Strategic Workshop Series on Smart Grid. He has been appointed as a panel member of the International Exchanges Committee of Royal Society since 2018. In recent years, he contributed to two reports on energy for Prime Minister’s Council for Science and Technology and UK Government Science Office. 

• IEEE Fellow
• IET Fellow
• PhD in Electrical Engineering, 1993
• MSc in Electrical Engineering, 1990
• BEng (Hons) in Electrical Engineering, 1988

• Technologies for smart grids
• Application of power electronics such as FACTS (Flexible AC Transmission System) and HVDC in transmission and distribution systems
• Integration of PHEVs into power grids
• Protection and control of distribution networks with distributed generation
• Micro-generation and Micro-grid
• Smart metering and wide area monitoring and awareness
• Power system economics
• Large scale power system optimisation and planning
• Analysis and control of power system stability
• Power quality and harmonics