Dr. Joachim
Holtz
1998 William E. Newell Power
Electronics Award Recipient
Joachim Holtz graduated from the Technical University Braunschweig, Germany, in 1967. He received his doctorate degree two years later from the same university.
In 1969 he became Associate Professor and Head of the Control Engineering Laboratory at the Indian Institute of Technology in Madras, India. He became Full Professor of Electrical Engineering in 1971.
In 1972 he joined the Siemens Research Laboratories in Erlangen, Germany. His research on high-power thyristor PWM inverters resulted in the invention of the first three-level inverter. In 1973 he became Head of the Research and Development Group New Traffic Technologies. He developed the linear synchronous motor concept for magnetically levitated high-speed trains. He invented a speed sensorless drive control system for this motor and designed a magnetic guidance system for levitated trains. Further work was related to multidimensional position control of freely suspended vehicles. These activities have finally resulted in the Transrapid magnetically levitated train, which is now fully developed and will be used for public transportation in Germany. It carries 200 passengers at 300 mph.
In 1976, Dr. Holtz became Professor and Head of the Electrical Machines and Drives Laboratory at the University of Wuppertal, Germany. His inventions of the space vector modulation method for inverter control, and of the current source PWM inverter topology, have been accepted world-wide as standard industrial technologies.
Dr. Holtz has intensively researched in the field of pulsewidth modulation for electronic power conversion. Contributions of application related importance are the overmodulation technique; the generation of optimized three-phase switching sequences in real-time; the instantaneous identification of the fundamental current in a highly distorted current wave; the trajectory tracking control method for the control of power converters in the multimegawatt range; an adaptive optimal pulsewidth modulation scheme for the elimination of time-variable eigenresonances in the railway overhead line; an harmonic eliminator to establish pure sinewave currents in the ac supply line of a 6 MW locomotive without passive filter components.
Dr. Holtz has published more than 100 technical papers including 60 refereed publications in journals; he has published 10 invited conference papers and 4 invited papers in journals. He has earned four IEEE prize paper awards. He is the coauthor of four books, and has been granted 27 patents. He is a Fellow of the IEEE, a recipient of the IES Dr. Eugene Mittelmann Achievement Award, and of the IAS Outstanding Achievement Award. Dr. Holtz is Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE Transactions on Industrial Electronics.
Source: Flyer from Award Presentation