Power Electronics for Renewable and Conventional Energy Systems

电气和电子技术(EET)的进步以仅仅几年前还无法想象的方式给社会带来了革命性的变化。消费电子产品、计算能力、数据存储和全球网络的进步促进了如今被视为理所当然的生活质量的显著提高--从平凡的网上银行和办公室通信，到奇迹般的医疗突破和经济全球化。EET对工业、学术界、政府和整个社会的运作至关重要。然而，为这项技术所需的基础设施提供动力和维护所需的能源量是相当大的，随着社会变得更加依赖EET，能源消耗继续飙升，预计还会呈指数级增长。**可以采取两种一般方法来解决能源需求不断上升的问题，这些需求有可能超过可用能源能力。首先是增加能源产能，但由于环境问题，当今社会对投资建设新的常规能源(如燃煤电厂)的胃口很小，在一个现代化和具有环保意识的社会，太阳能和风能等可再生能源解决方案被认为更具吸引力。第二种方法是提高当今技术的能源效率，以便在最大限度地减少低效的同时，尽可能多地从现有能源中“挤压”能源。**拟议的项目寻求考虑到这两种方法的解决方案，提出在电力电子设备方面推进可再生能源系统和能源利用。将开发和研究用于可再生能源系统的新型和改进的功率转换器，以帮助提高其能源能力，并将开发和研究用于传统能源系统的新型和改进的转换器，以减少能源浪费。其新颖性将在于拟议的现有转换器的替代方案的独创性以及成本和/或效率的改进。成本和复杂性将通过使用需要更少有源开关的拓扑来降低，效率将通过使用减少高频通断时转换器开关中的功率损耗的技术来提高，性能将通过利用将被开发的新的构建块转换器的新型架构的开发而得到改进。作为微电网和智能电网技术的一部分，这项研究将侧重于太阳能和风能可再生能源系统，以及用于传统能源系统和可再生能源系统的交流-直流转换器接口。这项拟议的研究将有助于加强加拿大在可再生能源系统方面的能力，并培养高素质的人才--3名博士生、4名硕士和2名本科生--以培养21世纪的多学科技能。

Advances in electrical and electronic technology (EET) have revolutionized society in ways that were unimaginable only a few years ago. Advances in consumer electronics, computational power, data storage and global networking have facilitated significant quality-of-life improvements that are now taken for granted - from the mundane, such as online banking and office communications, to the miraculous, such as medical breakthroughs and economic globalization. EET is essential to the functioning of industry, academia, government and society at large. The amount of energy needed to power and maintain the infrastructure needed for this technology, however, is considerable and is expected to increase exponentially as society becomes even more dependent on EET and energy consumption continues to skyrocket. **There are two general approaches that can be taken to address the problem of escalating energy needs that threaten to overtake available energy capacity. The first is to increase energy capacity, but there is little appetite in today's society to invest in the construction of new conventional energy sources such as coal plants due to environmental concerns and renewable energy solutions such as solar and wind are considered to be more attractive in a modern and environmentally conscious society. The second approach is to improve the energy efficiency of today's technology, in order to "squeeze" as much energy as possible from existing energy sources while minimizing inefficiencies. **The proposed project seeks to consider solutions that take into account both approaches by proposing advances to renewable energy systems and energy utilization with respect to their power electronics. New and improved power converters for renewable energy systems will be developed and researched as a means to help increase their energy capacity and new and improved converters for conventional energy systems will be developed and researched as a means to reduce energy waste. The novelty will be in the originality and improvement in cost and/or efficiency of the proposed alternatives to existing converters. Cost and complexity will be reduced by using topologies that require fewer active switches, efficiency will be increased using techniques that reduce the power lost in the converter switches when they are being turned on and off with high frequency, performance will be improved by the development of novel architectures that take advantage of the new building block converters that will be developed. The research will be focused on solar and wind renewable energy systems and on ac-dc converter interfaces for conventional energy systems as well as for renewable energy systems, as part of microgrid and smart grid technology. The proposed research will help strengthen Canadian capabilities in renewable energy systems and train highly qualified personnel - 3 PhD students, 4 Master's and 2 undergraduate students - to develop multidisciplinary skills for the 21st century.