Prof. De Doncker gives a presentation on "Control and Protection of multi-terminal MVDC Distribution Grids" at the 2nd IEEE Workshop on Electronic Power Transmission and Distribution eT&D 2017.

Starting from October 2^nd 2017 Zhiqing Yang joins the PGS after he earned his Master of Science degree at RWTH Aachen University.

Dr. Marco Stieneker and Shenghui Cui participate in the IEEE  Energy Conversion Congress & Expo in Cincinnati, Ohio, USA.

Mr. Cui presents his paper „Dynamic performance and fault-tolerant capability of a TLC-MMC hybrid DC-DC converter for interconnection of MVDC and HVDC grids”.

During June 3^rd – 7^th, Professor De Doncker and Jingxin Hu visited the IEEE IFEEC-ECCE Asia 2017 conference held in Kaohsiung, Taiwan. Professor De Doncker was invited to give a keynote speech on the topic of “Power Electronics – key enabling technology for a CO2 neutral electrical energy supply”. Meanwhile Jingxin Hu presented his paper “A Duty-Cycle Control Method to Ensure Soft-Switching Operation of a High-Power Three-Phase Dual-Active Bridge Converter”. The abstracts of the speech and the paper will be presented in the following.

Prof. Rik W. De Doncker and Dr. Marco Stieneker give a tutorial about „Flexible Distribution Grids based on DC Technologies“ at the IEEE “International Conference on DC Microgrids“ in Nürnberg.

Furthermore, the keynote with the topic „Direct Current in Medium-Voltage Distribution Grids“ is presented by Prof. De Doncker.

On the 7^th and 8^th of March 2017, the 3^rd international "Conference for wind power drives" takes place in the Eurogress, Aachen. The institute PGS is represented by Rizqy Averous, who gives a presentation on “Design and Performance Evaluation of a Grid Emulator Based on a 3L-NPC Converter”.

After the PhD thesis presentations of Dipl.-Ing. Nils Soltau, with the topic “High-Power Medium-Voltage DC-DC Converters: Design, Control and Demonstration”, and Dipl.-Ing. Marco Stieneker, with the topic “Analysis of Medium-Voltage Direct-Current Collector Grids in Offshore Wind Parks”, both candidates passed their respective PhD thesis defence.

Starting from December 1^st 2016 Benedict Mortimer joins the PGS Institute after he earned his Master of Science degree at RWTH Aachen University.

On the 18th of November the United Technologies Research Center (UTRC) welcomes UTRC-scholarship holders and interested students of RWTH Aachen University in the E.ON Energy Research Center. The innovation hub of United Technologies Corp. situated in the irish city Cork presents its research activities and gives a small overview about entrance job possibilities at UTRC, as well as other UTC-locations in Europe. During this half-day long event associates of OTIS, United Technologies Aerosystems and UTRC, as well as former interns give an insight view into the working environment and the possibility for subsequent discussions.

Rizqy Averous and Marco Stieneker visit the sixth edition of the international conference TORQUE 2016 in Munich. In one of the poster sessions Rizqy Averous presents his work in collaboration with the Institute of Automation of Complex Power Systems (ACS) of the E.ON Energy Research Center RWTH Aachen University and Siemens AG. The title of the paper is “Performance tests of a power-electronics converter for multi-megawatt wind turbines using a grid emulator”.

Jingxin Hu and Shenghui Cui attend the IEEE Energy Conversion Congress & Exposition (ECCE 2016) during September 18 – 22, in Milwaukee, USA. Jingxin Hu presents his research on a novel control method for the high power medium voltage dual-active bridge dc-dc converter to increase its efficiency in partial load conditions with a wide input voltage range, with his paper “Asymmetrical Duty-Cycle Control of Three-Phase Dual-Active Bridge Converter for Soft-Switching Range Extension”. Shenghui Cui gives a presentation of his research work on a novel high power high efficiency dc-dc converter to interconnect future medium voltage dc distribution grids and high voltage dc transmission grids, with his  paper “A High Step-Up Ratio Soft-Switching DC-DC Converter for Interconnection of MVDC and HVDC Grids”.

From June 22^nd to 24^th the annual IEEE Speedam conference will be held on Capri Island in Italy.

Johannes Voss takes part in the conference and presents his two papers "Design of a 2 MW DC-DC Power Supply Using a Medium Frequency Transformer" and "Comparative Study on Active Filtering using Resonant Controllers and Multiple Rotating Reference Frames".

Starting from June 1^st, 2016 Daniel von den Hoff joins the PGS Insitute after he earned his Master of Science degree at RWTH Aachen University.

Univ.-Prof. Dr.-Ing. habil Jürgen Petzold visited the PGS together with some colleagues from the Power Electronics and Control Group of the TU Ilmenau.

Starting from April 1^st, 2016 Philipp Joebges joins the PGS Insitute after he earned his Master of Science degree at RWTH Aachen University.

On march 10^th and 11^th Bernhard Burkhard and Nils Soltau participate in the „HIGH VOLTAGE PROPULSION NETWORK FOR ELECTRO/HYBRID AIRCRAFT” workshop in Ottobrunn. In this workshop participants from industry and universities talk about electrical propulsion systems for aircrafts, as well as all-electric aircraft concepts.

Starting from January 4^th, 2016 Steffen Beushausen joins the PGS Insitute after he earned his Master of Science degree at RWTH Aachen University. His research focus includes the development of the future driver circuits for medium voltage IGBTs.

The FVA-Infotagung 2015 this year takes place in the city of Würzburg in the Bavaria region. Around 650 participants gather in the Congress-Centrum Würzburg to discuss the actual researach topics in different subjects. Rizqy Averous as the leader of the working group "Converter System" of the research project "FVA-Gondel" presents the development of the power electronics converter for a 2.75 MW Wind Turbine. The development is conducted in cooperation with Siemens AG.

Nils Soltau presented his paper in the 4th International Conference on Renewable Energy and Applications (ICRERA) 2015. This year the conference takes place in Palermo, Italy and almost 300 papers from around the globe are presented. Among the presented papers in the conference, the paper from Nils which deals with the design of series inductances for high-power dc-dc converters has been selected as one of the best papers. 

This year PGS was visited by Professor Jian Sun. He joined the faculty at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) in 2002, where he is currently a Professor in the Department of Electrical, Computer, and Systems Engineering. He is also the Director of New York State Center for Future Energy Systems (CFES). During the visit, he also conducted a colloquium emphasizing the Impedance Modeling of Control of Power Electronics in Power Systems. During his talk, methods to analyze the stability of power system involving power electronics are introduced which can no longer be handled by conventional power system stability analysis methods.

During the ETG-Fachtagung „Elektrische Fahrzeugarchitekturen für Schienenfahrzeuge“ Marco Stieneker gave a presentation about the potential of MVDC grids for the energy supply of electrical railway systems.

Marco Stieneker took part in the CIGRE SC6.31 working group kickoff meeting in Vienna, Austria. The international group works on a medium-voltage direct current (MVDC) grid feasibility study.

Reinhold Bayerer studied physics at the Technical University of Darmstadt, Germany and completed in 1979. He continued at this University as Research Associate and achieved his doctor’s degree in physics in 1985. Since then, he works in the field of IGBT modules. A first paper on early IGBT-modules was given at PCI, Munich, 1987. He contributed to the fields of packaging technology, low inductance module design, test and application engineering, driver electronics, as well as manufacturing engineering. Several publications and patents may serve as a reference. Today, he is Fellow for physics of power modules and working at Infineon Technologies in Warstein, Germany.

His tutorial covers firing or controlling, control behavior of MOSFET, trend at MOSFET, control behavior of SiC devices, trend at IGBT, lowering carrier concentration prior to turn-off, dV/dt- and dI/dt-control , gate-Inductance, safe operation area, safe operation area of diode and control diode-recovery

In the IEEE PEDG Conference 2015 in Aachen, Rizqy Averous and his team receive the Best Paper Award. His paper "Development of a 4 MW Full-Size Wind-Turbine Test Bench" has been selected by the conference committee into the three best papers among the papers presented in the conference. In addition to the oral presentation, the conference participants had a chance to visit and see the test bench live in the test hall of the Center for Wind Power Drives after the tutorial session. More detail information can be found in the abstract of the paper below.

Rizqy Averous and Pablo Frack represent the PGS team to present papers in the 6th International Symposium on Power Electronics for Distributed Generation Systems (PEDG 2015) that is this year held in Aachen, Germany. Rizqy Averous introduces the newly developed 4 MW full-size wind turbine test bench in the Center for Wind Power Drives (CWD). Pablo Frack highlights in his presentation the energy supply system for refugee camps from renewable energy sources. Detailed information on both presented topics is provided in the following abstracts of the papers.

PGS team represented by Rizqy Averous, Pablo Frack and Johannes Voss participates in the 11th IEEE International Conference on Power Electronics and Drive Systems (PEDS 2015) held in Sydney Australia to discuss the ongoing research activities with the international communities. Three papers from different topics are presented by the PGS team in this conference. Detailed information on the presented papers can be found in the following abstracts.

Within this work, the influence of different voltage levels on the grid is investigated. On the one hand, increasing voltages lead to lower demand for copper and lower conduction loss. On the other hand, the effort for power electronic devices increases. Mrs. Katharina Mütze presented the relation between these two effects.

Sheharyar Ansari presented his master thesis at E.ON ERC on "Multi-phase generator concept for offshore wind turbines connected to an MVDC grid". The design as well as the performance of this concept were investigated based on the developed simulation models in FEM and Simulink/PLECS simulation platform.

Dennis Brinckmann presented his master thesis at PGS on "Explorative analysis of scenarios for wind energy in Germany based on a visionary view of the energy supply system". Markus Plewnia closed the PGS colloquium by his master thesis presentation on "The impact of flexibilization measures on the operation of conventional power plants".

M.Sc. Yunzheng Chen joins the institute as a research associate

Rizqy Averous and Marco Stieneker visited the Power Electronics & Machines for Wind and Water Applications PEMWA 2014 Symposium in Milwaukee, WI, USA and presented their papers "Performance Characteristics of a Doubly-FedGenerator on a Test-Rig with Full-ScaleConverter-Based Grid Emulator" and "Optimum Design of Medium-Voltage DC Collector Grids Depending on the Offshore-Wind-Park Power".

The supplier of the new test bench at the Institute for Power Generation and Storage Systems of the E.ON Energy Research Center publishes a press release to the test bench.

Pablo Frack und Nils Soltau visit the Power Electronics for Distributed Generation PEDG 2014 Conference in Galway present their papers "Control-Strategy Design for Frequency Control in Autonomous Smart Microgrids" and "Development and Demonstration of a Medium-Voltage High-Power DC-DC Converter for DC Distribution Systems".

Pablo Zumeta presents his thesis „Design and Implementation of a FPGA-Based Control for a DAB Converter System” at E.ON ERC. The PCB developed within this thesis generates the gate signals for a laboratory set-up consisting of a small-scale dual-active bridge (DAB) converter system.

The report on the research project “High-Power DC-DC Converter” has been published in the E.ON ERC Series under ISSN: 1868-7415 Volume 5, Issue 5.

Prof. De Doncker visits the International Power Electronics Conference -ECCE Asia- in Hiroshima presenting the paper “Power Electronic Technologies for Flexible DC Distribution Grids”.

Prof. De Doncker gives a presentation titled “Power Electronics – the key enabling technology for future electrical grids” at the INTELEC95 Telecommunications Energy Symposium 2014 in Zaltbommel.

Prof. Sauer gives a presentation titled “Lithium-ion vs. lead-acid batteries and double use of UPS systems” at the INTELEC95 Telecommunications Energy Symposium 2014 in Hamburg.

The PGS is now equipped with a new test bench for power electronic converters and high-speed drives in the megawatt range.

M.Sc. Zian Qin from Aalborg University, Denmark, joins the institute for three months as a visiting scientist.