Development and experimental testing of an advanced power converter system for renewable energy application with high voltage DC distribution

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The global greenhouse gas emissions from Information and Communication Technology (ICT) data centers areprojected to exceed 2007 levels by more than twofold in 2020. Powering ICT data centers are extremelyenergy-intensive operations; in 2014, data centers alone accounted for approximately 5 billion kWh of theCanada's energy consumption. Ottawa-based ICT company, CISTECH Limited has started to look into greenand innovative ICT power solutions to supply clean, reliable, and sustainable energy for powering the datacenters. Typical power electronic interface employed in renewable energy systems with DC power distributionfor ICT data centers require a separate grid-connected power converter to provide uninterruptible power wheneither the renewable energy source or the backup energy storage device is not capable of providing the requiredload power. Collaborated with the Power Electronics for Sustainable Energy Research group at YorkUniversity, their collaborative research project has resulted in a new and cost-effective power converterconcept for powering high voltage DC distributed ICT data centers with multiple renewable energy sources.Simulation results have indicated that the devised converter is able to increase the power efficiency by morethan 3% compared to the existing power architecture used in any renewable systems with high voltage DCdistribution. Based on the successful outcomes from the current collaboration with CISTECH, CISTECH andYork are now working towards the direction to develop a functional hardware engineering prototype byperforming in-depth experimental testing on the prototype unit.