Reflections of Peyman Koohi
In our serie "What does the future bring?" our ESR's are sharing their perspective. This serie is linked to the Horizon Magazine article published on Monday, March 13 2024 which focusses on EU support for Ukrainian researchers including ETUT project regarding "Building bridges between Ukrainian and EU researchers" featuring Regis Nibaruta, Ivan Struzhko, Vladimir Havryliuk, Gert Rietveld and Frank Leferink. The full article can be found https://ec.europa.eu/research-and-innovation/en/horizon-magazine/building-bridges-between-ukrainian-and-eu-researchers By Andrew Dunne.
Via Cordis, the project is described as'the ETUT project will model, design, estimate, quantify and monitor economic measures for a reliable, safe, effective and greener electrical transport system. The training programme will include innovative methods to be applied in electric transport... it may have far reaching consequences and may even see the railway network supporting or replacing local electrical utility networks' Can you explain the problem specifically? In simple terms, what exactly is the electrical engineering challenge in terms of future electric transport systems and what's the link with local electrical utility networks too?
Generally, the greatest challenge in transport electrification is the massive extra demand for electrical energy. The energy demand raises by increasing the population each year, thus, governments aim to compensate for the growth in demand by developing the infrastructures and expanding the power generation capability. However, a fully electrified transport system leads to exponentially grows in electricity demand and changes the equilibrium. Current electric power system infrastructure and power plants cannot supply the extra need for electric energy imposed by electric vehicles (in case all vehicles are electrified). There are different ways to overcome this challenge, such as developing distributed generation units based on renewable energies and their integration with different types of energy storage, such as fuel cells, batteries, supercapacitors, etc. Additionally, efficiency improvement, utilizing regenerated electrical power, providing sufficient power during the acceleration, charging time reduction, overall cost and volume reduction, enhancement of the driving range, and improving the whole system reliability are the main goals of transport electrification.
When we spoke you described these two areas of electrical engineering where the main focus was - electromagnetic compatibility and power electronics. Can you give me examples of the kind of devices that might benefit from improvements to both and can you explain the link with these two areas and future electric transport systems?
The performance of renewable sources and storage systems highly relies on power converters and requires more advanced power electronics-based converters with specific features. Toward previously mentioned objectives, researchers aimed to develop and investigate advanced power converters to fulfill application requirements, and extract the most advantage out of renewable sources and storage. For instance, the investigation of novel topologies with a reduced number of components improved efficiency and lower the overall cost and volume. Different modulation techniques and filter design approaches are also investigated to reduce electromagnetic emissions.
Are there any examples of really applied research which you are currently conducting which relates to electric transport systems which we can talk about? Can you explain what you are working on - in an applied sense - with whom, and how?
In recent years, multiport-based DC/DC converters attracted the focus of researchers because of their specific features, which made them good candidates for applications such as railway traction systems, electric aircraft, etc. Several converters are required in an electric vehicle since different sources and loads exist, which makes the whole system more expensive and large in volume. Multiport converters as an alternative solution can combine all separated converters in one single stage, and directly link sources/loads to each other. Therefore, the power density and efficiency are considerably improved, and since a part of the topology is shared among different ports, fewer components are required. Although the integration of ports provides a number of considerable advantages, it complicates the control stage and requires more advanced control techniques. My focus is on simplifying the control stage of the multiport converters and improving the efficiency and power density even more by applying advanced modulation techniques and modifying the topology.
What is the long-term hope with this work? From a research point of view, what are YOUR long-term motivations for this all is and what are the impacts he envisages in the future (i.e. who does he see will benefit from this research in the future, and how?).
According to the amount of recently conducted work on multiport converters in both academy and industry in the last two years, the exponentially growing number of publications, and the urgency of the developing electric transportation system, It seems the electrical system of the future generation of electric vehicles will be based multiport topologies. Therefore, both manufacturing companies and end users will gain benefit from the proposed solution for interfacing sources/loads, since the overall cost is reduced and the performance is improved.
Could I get a reflection from you on the importance of developing future electric transport systems in view of climate change and emission reduction targets? Why is this issue you're tackling so important from an environmental perspective?
One of the immediate reasons to move toward electric vehicles from fossil fuel-based vehicles is to reduce greenhouse gases emission, and as explained previously, the extra demand caused by electric vehicles should be supplied by renewable energy sources such as solar energy, wind energy, etc. The proposed converter can make this goal more achievable.