Rate My Professor Jef Beerten

Jef Beerten is an associate professor BOF in the Faculty of Engineering Science at KU Leuven, where he is affiliated with the Electrical Energy Systems and Applications (ELECTA) research group in the Department of Electrical Engineering (ESAT). He serves as head of the Subdivisie EnergyVille Electa - Beerten, and is a member of Divisie EnergyVille and KIES – KU Leuven Institute for Energy and Society. Beerten obtained his Master's degree in electrical engineering from KU Leuven in 2009 and his PhD summa cum laude in 2013 titled "Modeling and Control of DC Grids," supervised by Prof. Ronnie Belmans. After his PhD, he was a guest researcher at KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden for three months and a postdoctoral fellow at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) in 2014-2015. He returned to KU Leuven as a postdoctoral researcher funded by the Research Foundation - Flanders (FWO) and was appointed BOF associate professor in 2016. He teaches courses such as Power Systems, Flexible Electrical Power Systems, and Electrical Energy Conversion for Renewable Energy and Storage.

Beerten's research focuses on power system modelling and control, power electronics modelling and control, and HVDC systems, particularly grid-forming converters, modular multilevel converters, small-signal stability analysis, and the integration of offshore wind farms and renewable energy sources. As promotor or co-promotor, he leads projects including "Controlling future converter-based power systems – a case study of Australia" (2026-2027), "DC voltage control of multi-terminal bipolar HVDC systems under unbalanced conditions" (2025-2029), and "Stability analysis of a bipolar VSC-HVDC connected offshore wind farm with grid-forming control" (2025-2029). He has published over 160 works, with key contributions such as "Generalized Steady-State VSC MTDC Model for Sequential AC/DC Power Flow Algorithms" (2012, cited over 600 times), "Analysis of Power Sharing and Voltage Deviations in Droop-Controlled DC Grids" (2013), and recent articles in IEEE Transactions on Power Systems like "Control Design Impacts of Grid-Forming STATCOMs for Wind Farm Systems" (2026). His research has more than 7,000 citations on Google Scholar. Beerten received the inaugural ABB Research Award in Honor of Hubertus von Gruenberg in 2016 for his doctoral thesis, granting US$300,000, and the IEEE Power & Energy Society 'Best of the Best' conference paper award for "Analysis of Power Redispatch Schemes for HVDC Grid Secondary Voltage Control."