For Mateus Giesbrecht, current coordinator of CINE’s Energy Generation program, balancing industrial work with pursuing his master’s and doctoral degrees wasn’t easy. But the effort was worth it.

As soon as he graduated in Electrical Engineering, Mateus landed a job in industry. For a decade, he worked for multinational companies, working on the design and development of various electrical machines.

In parallel, he continued his academic training. His dissertation and thesis focused on the simulation of dynamic systems, which, in short, are systems whose state changes over time, such as electrical machines.

The result of this unique trajectory was a deep practical understanding of electrical machines, combined with mastery of mathematical tools that allow them to be monitored. Using this experience, he now leads research projects at CINE that aim to improve, through condition monitoring techniques, the reliability and efficiency of large electrical machines such as wind turbines.

Mateus earned his undergraduate (2006), master’s (2008), and doctoral (2013) degrees in Electrical Engineering from Unicamp. Between 2005 and 2015, he worked at Multibrás, Whirlpool, GE Hydro, and Andritz Hydro. In 2015, he became a professor at Unicamp’s School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, where he has supervised 47 undergraduate, master’s, and doctoral research projects.

In 2024, when CINE began working in the wind energy field, Mateus became a member of the center within the Energy Generation program, initially as deputy coordinator and, more recently, as coordinator.

In this interview, he recounts his journey to becoming a wind energy researcher and explains how CINE’s research will detect faults in wind generators, achieve better utilization of the energy generated, and optimize offshore wind power generation.

Tell us how your academic background and industrial experience have contributed to your work as a wind energy researcher.

I worked for 10 years in industry for large multinationals, working in research and development and designing electrical machines. I began my career working in research and development of control techniques for induction electric machines for a large multinational white goods company, and then moved on to designing synchronous electric machines for a large multinational energy company. Electric machines are largely responsible for transforming mechanical energy, which can come from a turbine, for example, into electrical energy. Therefore, because my work involved significant technical depth, I became an expert in electrical machines, which was fundamental to starting research in wind energy, particularly in the study of wind generators, which are essentially large electrical machines. In parallel, I completed my master’s and doctoral degrees in the areas of dynamic systems identification and time series analysis. It’s a subject with quite deep mathematics, yet very elegant and practical, which allows us to characterize a dynamic system based on a few measurements. Practically speaking, an electrical machine is a dynamic system, and various measurements are usually made on it, such as speed, voltage, and current. Thus, by applying these measurements to system identification methods, it’s possible to characterize what’s happening with the electrical machine at that moment. It’s even possible to determine whether it’s operating normally or if it’s experiencing a failure, even if the effect of that failure is imperceptible to an observer.

Beyond the technical aspect, during my engineering career, I had extensive contact with companies operating electrical machines used as generators in large hydroelectric plants. These interactions always revealed a significant demand for methods that allowed for diagnosing the health of their machines. Thus, combining my professional technical experience with electrical machines with my academic experience in system identification, I became interested in fault diagnosis techniques for electrical machines. In the field of wind generation, these techniques are essential to ensuring the reliable operation of wind generators and allowing for a certain predictability in maintenance routines. As a result, I became a researcher in the field of wind energy, focusing primarily on machine condition monitoring methods.

The technical aspect was crucial, but I also cannot ignore the soft skills I acquired in the industry. As I often coordinated international technical projects, dealing directly with suppliers and customers from other countries, I participated in several training courses abroad on how to deal with people from different cultures and how to develop projects in diverse contexts. In research, one does not work alone. In fact, researchers are generally project coordinators, supervising postdoctoral fellows, undergraduate, master’s, and doctoral students, and interacting with other researchers to achieve research objectives. These soft skills acquired during my time in industry also help me navigate the different interfaces as a researcher.

It’s not very common to find researchers in academia who completed their master’s and doctoral degrees while working for companies. Was that challenging for you?

It really required a lot of dedication. Two of the most time-consuming activities during the master’s and doctoral programs are taking courses and conducting experimental activities. During my master’s, I worked as a development engineer, and my dissertation focused on a problem I was studying within the company. This freed up half of the hours I needed to travel to Unicamp and take courses—I made up the other half on other days of the week—and I was able to carry out all the experimental activities in the company’s laboratory. My dissertation contributed to a test that used to take almost a day to be simulated in seconds, significantly reducing product development time. I believe the number of hours I had to free up paid off for the company in the end.

During my doctorate, I was working at another company as a project engineer, and the topic of my research wasn’t directly of interest to the company. However, I had a lot of support from my immediate superiors, to whom I am very grateful, and I was given all the hours I needed to complete the courses. As for the experiments, I performed them on the weekends—for a long time, I dedicated my entire Saturday to them, and I also took advantage of holidays and vacations. Interestingly, near the end of my doctorate, I completed a month-long training session at the company’s headquarters in Europe. On weekends, instead of wandering around the city, I had to dedicate many hours to completing a scientific paper with the main results of the research. Of course, I spent some time exploring the city I was in, but most weekends I stayed at the hotel working on my research. Looking back now, I’m sure it was worth it. I’d do it all again!

What motivated you to become a research professor after several years working as an engineer in companies?

The main reason I made this difficult decision was the pleasure I derive from teaching and disseminating knowledge. Since my undergraduate studies, I’ve demonstrated an ability to synthesize content and present it to my classmates, and in my work in industry, one of the activities that brought me the most joy was training new colleagues. A curious incident occurred during my doctoral defense. At the time, I was still working full-time as an engineer, and one of the committee members said that I would contribute much more to our country in academia than in an engineering firm. That comment made a deep impression on me, and, combining my vocation with the perception of those around me, I concluded that I could do much more relevant work for our society by becoming a researcher in academia.

Since 2024, CINE has been working on several wind energy projects. Comment on the importance of this form of renewable and clean energy in Brazil’s energy transition.

Brazil’s electricity matrix is ​​characterized by a strong reliance on renewable energy due to our hydroelectric power plants. As the country grows, so does the demand for energy, and new generation projects are needed. Hydropower has already been extensively explored, leaving alternatives such as wind, solar, and biomass energy. Of these energy sources, wind power has one of the lowest costs per MWh generated. Furthermore, Brazil has onshore wind potential approximately 10 times the installed capacity of the Itaipú Hydroelectric Power Plant, one of the largest power plants in the world. Therefore, we have significant potential for installing wind units, ensuring that our electricity grid remains clean and renewable.

What are the major objectives of CINE’s Power Generation program in the area of ​​wind energy, and what are the main challenges its researchers face to achieve these goals?

The main objectives of CINE’s Power Generation program in the area of ​​wind energy are the development of diagnostic algorithms for generators and mechanical components of wind turbines; The development of power converter control techniques to transform the electrical energy extracted from wind generators so that it is compatible with the electrical grid, and the mechanical modeling of different types of wind turbines for offshore applications. Achieving these goals requires overcoming several challenges, such as mathematical modeling of complex systems, setting up experimental benches to validate the techniques studied, and conducting experiments that meaningfully reproduce the behavior of wind generators and turbines in the laboratory. Another important challenge is transforming the complexity of the study into practical tools that are relevant to end users.

How can the results of the program’s work benefit society?

Regarding the development of diagnostic algorithms, the final results will be techniques to assess whether any defects are occurring in generators and mechanical components of wind turbines. These techniques will allow even small defects, which we call incipient failures, to be diagnosed, allowing wind farm operators to intervene and prevent failures from developing into catastrophic problems. This increases the availability of wind turbines and, consequently, increases the confidence that the energy will be generated as expected. This allows the expansion of wind power to be carried out more reliably, with more predictable impacts on the national power grid. Regarding the development of power converter control techniques, research will enable better use of the generated energy through more efficient converters. The converter control techniques to be developed will also focus on improving the quality of the energy transmitted to the grid, which also influences the reliability of the wind power supply. Finally, modeling mechanical components and offshore wind turbines will allow for more efficient and reliable exploitation of the abundant winds available at sea, providing another alternative for providing clean and reliable energy.