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

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.

WP1 will organize and manage the dissemination of information outside the team, creating impact and opportunities for dissemination with other universities, researchers, students and countries with low penetration of renewable and smart grids. This impact will be reflected in:
- Half day seminars, where the members of the team will present their results to the community which will generate an instance of debate and discussion with experts about the progress and challenges of Power Electronics in Smart Grids.
- Presentations regarding the progress of the project to researchers, students and the community in general organized at their workplace (Universidad de Talca, Universidad de Concepción and University of Nottingham).
- Keynote papers to be presented at very well recognized international IEEE Conferences such as ICIT, IECON, ECCE, among others.
- Dedicated seminar at the end of the third year of this project on Power Electronics in Smart Grids. With the proposed seminar, new challenges and problems will be discovered and it will be possible to know how these problems are being solved.
- Special Section dedicated to Power Electronics in Smart Grids in one of the journals in the area of power electronics of the IEEE (Transactions on Power Electronics, Transactions on Industrial Electronics, and others), proposed by the members of the team.

The project will generate different kinds of data, from new multi-modular structures for grid embedded converters to new modulation and control schemes for the proposed structures, new control algorithms for grid interconnection and the construction of an experimental prototype for validation of the proposed structures performance. Grid interconnected power converters will be subject to many standards, particularly relating to their interaction with the grid. Such standards are known as "Grid Codes" and vary from country to country. The standards are different depending on whether connection is at the transmission level, or the distribution level. The main requirements areas of the Grid Codes can be summarized as:
- Power Quality.
- Frequency/power control.
- Voltage support/reactive power consumption.
- Performance under fault conditions.

As this proposed project represents the interface between research and development in power electronics and power networks, all currently existing norms and standards in each of these areas will be used, such as:
- IEC Standards for Power Electronics - Covered by TC 22 (Power electronic systems and equipment).
- Smart Grid Standards - Covered by IEEE Standards Association.
- EN 50160 and IEC 61000 Power Quality Standards.

In order to produce an impact at the industrial level, the team will seek an active role in the standardization activities through interacting with the relevant bodies through industrial representatives in Chile. This will take place with the objective of gaining inputs on matters of manufacturability, specifications, standards, commercial viability and commercial opportunity of this proposal. The researchers consider that with this cooperation it will be practical to introduce into the industry the proposed project.

Finally, as another expected impact, the team will observe any relevant patent issue at the every stage of the project development. The project will ensure a high level of project information dissemination by undertaking additional actions, such as:
- To publish in scientific literature while observing any relevant patent issues.
- To make presentations at international conferences while observing any relevant patent issues.
- To publish articles in trade magazines and the popular press.