The 30th General Assembly of the Federation of Engineering Institutions of Asia and the Pacific (FEIAP) announced the Engineer of the Year 2022 in the Philippines on July 29.

Recommended by the China Association for Science and Technology (CAST), Sun Hongbin, a Professor of Tsinghua University, won the FEIAP Engineer of the Year 2022 award.

He is the second Chinese engineer who has won the award since CAST became a full member of the FEIAP.

Sun, also Vice-President of the Taiyuan University of Technology (in charge of administrative work) and Deputy Chairman of Energy Committee of the World Federation of Engineering Organizations (WFEO), has long been dedicated to the research and teaching of power system dispatching and control, and smart grid and energy internet technology, with a particular focus on energy management systems, automatic voltage control and integrated energy systems.

In the past 25 years, he led the team at Tsinghua University that developed the first commercial AVC system in the world, which has been widely applied and recognized as a milestone breakthrough in global smart grid development. In China, 81% generation capacity of Fossil-fired/Hydro power plants and 56% generation capacity of Wind/PV farms have been close-looped controlled successfully by the innovative AVC, which made the operation of China’s power grid (the biggest power grid in the world) more reliable, more low-carbon, and more cost-effective. The innovative AVC has also been implemented in the control center of PJM interconnection, the largest regional power grid in USA. Thanks to his seminal contributions, AVC has become one of the fundamental wide-area control systems for power grids around the world.

Additionally, Sun authored the book Internet Energy, founded the IEEE Conference on Energy Internet and Energy System Integration, initiated the IEEE PES energy internet coordination committee and served as its first chairman, as well as having acted as the Deputy Chairman of Energy Committee of the WFEO, making great contributions to the development of energy internet both at home and abroad.

The winning of this prize has increased the international influence of China’s engineering sector.

The FEIAP is a regional international organization and was founded in 1978 with the support of UNESCO and other international organizations.

The FEIAP aims to promote the technological cooperation and communication of information between members, encourage the mutual recognition of membership for engineers from different countries in the region, support engineering related meetings and strengthen communication and cooperation between international, regional, governmental and non-governmental organizations.

The FEIAP established the award of Engineer of the Year to encourage engineers to make bigger contributions to the engineering field in the Asia-Pacific region.

Editor: Li Han