Power Electronics for Renewable and Conventional Energy Systems

电气和电子技术（EET）的进步以几年前无法想象的方式彻底改变了社会。消费电子产品、计算能力、数据存储和全球网络方面的进步促进了生活质量的显著改善，这些改善现在被认为是理所当然的——从网上银行和办公室通信等平凡的事情，到医疗突破和经济全球化等奇迹般的事情。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数量是相当可观的，并且随着社会对EET的依赖程度越来越高，能源消耗继续飙升，预计将呈指数级增长。**有两种一般的方法可以解决不断上升的能源需求，威胁超过可用能源容量的问题。首先是增加能源容量，但由于环境问题，当今社会几乎没有兴趣投资建设新的传统能源，如燃煤电厂，而太阳能和风能等可再生能源解决方案被认为在现代和环境意识强的社会中更具吸引力。第二种方法是提高当今技术的能源效率，以便从现有能源中“挤出”尽可能多的能源，同时最大限度地减少低效率。**拟议的项目寻求考虑到这两种方法的解决办法，建议在可再生能源系统和能源利用方面的电力电子方面取得进展。将开发和研究用于可再生能源系统的新的和改进的电源转换器，作为帮助增加其能源容量的手段，并将开发和研究用于常规能源系统的新的和改进的转换器，作为减少能源浪费的手段。新颖性将在于现有转换器的替代方案的原创性和成本和/或效率的改进。通过使用需要较少有源开关的拓扑结构，可以降低成本和复杂性；通过使用减少高频开关开关功率损失的技术，可以提高效率；通过开发利用即将开发的新型构建块转换器的新架构，可以提高性能。作为微电网和智能电网技术的一部分，研究将集中在太阳能和风能可再生能源系统以及传统能源系统和可再生能源系统的交流-直流转换器接口上。拟议中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——为21世纪发展多学科技能。

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.