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

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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.