The University of Aberdeen has joined forces with research institutes across Europe, as well as Vestas and semiconductor makers to improve the performance, reliability and cost of components for power transmission.
The University of Aberdeen High Voltage Direct Current (HVDC) research centre is one of nine partners on a new three-year Horizon Europe funded project, called MoWiLife (Condition Monitoring and Wide Bandgap Power Electronics – Leading Innovations for the European Energy Sector).
Aberdeen university’s Dragan Jovcic and Xin Yuan will bring their HVDC and power electronics expertise to the initiative which will study new transistor technologies based on SiC (silicon carbide) and their application in power generation and transmission.
All power converters traditionally used in the power industry employ transistors and other semiconductor devices based on silicon technology, but recent research has indicated potential significant benefits of SiC MOSFET (metal oxide semiconductor field effect transistor) which has been under development at project partner Infineon and some other semiconductor manufacturers.
The Aberdeen HVDC research team will be responsible for developing and validating a functional SiC MOSFET hybrid high voltage DC circuit breaker, which builds on previous research projects at Aberdeen related to DC circuit breakers and DC transmission grid development.
Jovcic said: “DC (direct current) electrical systems have not been much utilised since AC (alternating current) systems have been preferred with traditional overland power transmission and conventional electricity generation.
“However, AC power can only be transmitted over relatively short distances with subsea cables, and as we look increasingly to offshore wind or tidal technology to meet growing demand, solutions are needed to create high-voltage direct current (HVDC) connections and to eventually develop an HVDC grid.
“We will use desktop research and also develop 5 kV DC CB demonstrator based on SiC MOSFETs in our HVDC laboratory for experimental testing.”