REliable Power Electronic based Power System

The modern society has to become more energy efficient and use more renewable generation in order to be sustainable - a key technology in this mission is power electronics, which converts electrical energy from one stage to another and the power system is becoming very power electronic based. Three great technology challenges are facing in the future: 1) how to keep a high system reliability when many new power electronic components are introduced into the grid system; 2) the cost from failure, downtime, and maintenance are bottlenecks to further reduce Levelized Cost of Energy (LCoE) from renewable generation; and 3) development of efficient and reliable power electronics products requiring minimum testing time to validate the life expectancy. Meeting these challenges requires the establishment of a new research platform for design and test of power electronic systems and their integration into the grid for a future REliable Power Electronic based Power System. The development of modeling and test tools for the activity is only possible by combining several disciplines like electrical engineering, system engineering, power system analysis, physics, statistics for reliability assessment, and control theory. To create this new and better understanding of power electronic system combined with its integration into the grid system this project is initiated. The activity will have research on failure mechanism of power electronic and power system components, multi-time scale modeling and system assessment, power electronic system modeling and analysis, control of power electronic based power system, system probabilistic and reliability assessment, and validation of the proposed methods.
The outcomes will provide a unique fundamental understanding on the combined influence from different stressors on component and system wear out for the components used in the grid system. It also enables to identify the key variables in power system design to make it more reliable and robust.