Dr. Mi is the Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at San Diego State University. He is a Fellow of IEEE and SAE. He is also the Director of the Caili & Daniel Chang Center for Electric Drive Transportation. He was previously a faculty member at the University of Michigan-Dearborn from 2001 to 2015, and an Electrical Engineer with General Electric from 2000 to 2001. He also served as the CTO of 1Power Solutions, Inc. and EV Safe Charger, Inc. Dr. Mi received his Ph. D from the University of Toronto, Canada, in 2001.  Dr. Mi has published five books, 200+ journal papers, 130 conference papers, and 20+ issued and pending patents. He served as Editor-in-Chief, Area Editor, Guest Editor, and Associate Editor of multiple IEEE Transactions and international journals, as well as the General Chair of over ten IEEE international conferences. Dr. Mi has won numerous awards, including the “Distinguished Teaching Award” and “Distinguished Research Award” from the University of Michigan-Dearborn, IEEE Region 4 “Outstanding Engineer Award,” IEEE Southeastern Michigan Section “Outstanding Professional Award,” and SAE “Environmental Excellence in Transportation (E2T) Award.” He is the recipient of three Best Paper Awards from IEEE Transactions on Power Electronics and the 2017 ECCE Student Demonstration Award. In 2019, he received the Inaugural IEEE Power Electronics Emerging Technology Award. In 2022, he received the Albert W. Johnson Research Lectureship and was named the Distinguished Professor, the highest honor given to an SDSU faculty member, and only one award is given each year. Most recently, he received the 2023 IEEE PELS Vehicle and Transportation Systems Achievement Award, the IEEE Transactions on Industry Applications Best Paper Award, and the SDSU Innovator of the Year Award. In 2024, he received Alumni Association Distinguished Faculty Award from SDSU. 

The number of electric vehicles (EVs) is growing rapidly, and so are retired EV batteries. The EV batteries are costly in production and recycling. Managing retired EV batteries is thus important for both the economy and the environment. On the other hand, there is a great need of energy storage solutions due to the rapid growth of renewable energy generation throughout the world. The US Department of Energy (DOE) and the California Energy Commission (CEC) have funded multiple projects to promote second-life EV batteries (SLBs) in storage applications. However, deploying SLBs will encounter serious issues, such as lifetime, cost, safety, liability, and regulations. This talk will discuss the barriers and proposed solutions to use of SLBs in grid storage applications, including the aging mechanism, charge/discharge methods, thermal management, cell/pack balancing, energy management, policy, standards, and fire codes related to energy storage systems using SLBs. The talk will also touch base on other recent innovations in enabling SLBs for grid and renewable energy applications, including single-stage inverter with boost capabilities, active balancing, advanced energy management systems (EMS), and wireless battery management systems (wBMS).