Newton Fund - New Configurations of Power Converters for Grid Interconnection Systems

Completed

Other Power and Storage Technologies(Electricity transmission and distribution)

Basic and strategic applied research

ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY (Electrical and Electronic Engineering)

Not Cross-cutting

Professor J Clare
Electrical and Electronic Engineering
University of Nottingham

Standard

EPSRC

14 April 2015

13 February 2018

34 months

£162,848

Energy

East Midlands

Newton Programme

Professor J Clare, Electrical and Electronic Engineering, University of Nottingham

Dr A Watson, Electrical and Electronic Engineering, University of Nottingham
Dr P Wheeler, Electrical and Electronic Engineering, University of Nottingham
Dr P Zanchetta, Electrical and Electronic Engineering, University of Nottingham

Project Contact, Universidad de Concepción (UdeC), Chile
Project Contact, University of Talca, Chile

This Newton Fund project will be a colaboration between the University of Nottingham, Uk and the Universities of Talca and Concepcion, Chile. According the National Energy Strategy proposed by the Chilean Government in March 2012, the growing technological development in Chile has lead to the search of energy efficiency and the penetration of renewable energies and other generation systems to the electricity supply network. In this context, power converters play an important role for the management of electric energy, providing the interconnection between the generation and the distribution systems. This project will investigate new multi-modular power conversion architectures within such an integrated power interconnection system. Such architectures allow the grid interconnection of different types of generation and loads enabling a cost effective, clean and sustainable electrical transmission and distribution structure for Chile (which could also be extensible to the rest of South-America and even Europe) with improved power quality. Specific objectives of the proposal are small and lightweight multi-modular power converter structures to enable grid embedded generators. The development of advanced modulation and control algorithms are needed for conditioning in multi-parameter systems. The required control algorithms will be based on a study of the proposed embedded architectures and their behavior for different grid conditions such as low voltage, high harmonic content, voltage distortion, and frequency variations. Functionality of proposed converter architectures will be verified through hardware validation and testing. A smart electrical system as such should clearly address the two most important factors for secure, cost-effective energy: improving efficiency and maintaining supply

15/07/15