Professor Eduardo F. Camacho receives a new ERC Proof of Concept Grant

Their project aims to optimize the production of commercial solar plants using Predictive Control algorithms by Cooperative Models with Multiple Scenarios

Researcher Eduardo Fernández Camacho, professor in the Department of Systems Engineering and Automation at the University of Seville, has received one of the Proof of Concept Grants awarded by the European Research Council (ERC). Worth €150,000, this funding will support the Cooperative Optimal Control of Solar Plants project, which continues Fernández Camacho's extensive research in this area.

The main objective of this research is to demonstrate that Multi-Scenario Cooperative Model Predictive Control (MSC-MPC) algorithms, developed within the framework of the OCONTSOLAR project, for which Eduardo Fernández Camacho has already received an ERC Advanced Grant, can be effectively applied to optimize the production of commercial solar power plants. The core idea is to coordinate the various subsystems of a plant to optimize production over a multi-day horizon, taking into account uncertainties regarding environmental and market conditions.

The project falls within the funding line granted by the European Research Council to Fernández Camacho, renowned for his research in automatic control, dynamic systems, and robotics, with a focus on the modeling and control of complex systems. Throughout his extensive career, he has participated in the design of algorithms for optimizing and improving the performance of automatic systems in various fields, such as industry and robotics. He currently works for the AICIA technology center and is also an Honorary Research Fellow in the Department of Systems Engineering and Automation at the University of Seville.

The aim of these ERC Proof of Concept Grants is to accelerate the transition of research results to commercial or social applications. Eduardo Fernández Camacho is one of the 20 Spanish researchers who have received this funding, making Spain the second country in terms of the number of researchers and institutions benefiting from these grants, which the ERC has distributed across 21 countries in Europe in this call for proposals.

A fruitful and extensive career

Professor Fernández Camacho holds a doctorate in industrial engineering and is Professor Emeritus at the University of Seville, where he has spent his extensive career as a teacher and researcher at the Higher Technical School of Engineering. A pioneer of the methodology known as 'predictive control', he has written several books, including *Model Predictive Control*, and numerous articles in journals. 

He was president of the European Union Control Association (EUCA) and chaired the International Affairs Committee of the Control Systems Society (CSS) of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). He was also a member of the IEEE CSS Board and the Council of the International Federation of Automatic Control (IFAC). He is an honorary member of both IFAC and IEEE. 

In 2018, he received one of the prestigious Advanced Grants from the European Research Council (ERC) to work on the optimal control of solar thermal systems. He has supervised 37 doctoral theses and has been the principal investigator on multiple funded projects.