VISION

Energy efficient systems and solutions require more use of power electronics in which Danish industries and universities have a stronghold. However, the technologies and competencies built up during the last three decades are challenged from two aspects. 

1. Firstly, new fast switching technologies, which promise radical size, efficiency and performance improvements, but require new competencies, designs, test methods and workflows.  
    
   2. Secondly, more stringent reliability requirements to reduce the Cost-of-Energy demand the design and testing of high-reliability power electronic products under constrained design cost and time.

Thirdly Existing solutions based on current technologies and tools are copied rapidly. To maintain our stronghold, we need simulation driven development methods and reliability-oriented tools to master the complexity of the new technologies, exploit the promised improvement opportunities and reduce time to market. Cooperation between universities and companies is vital both to acquire and develop the new technologies and to develop new adequate workflows, utilizing the benefits of a “digital twin” of the physical product as described in “Industry 4.0”.

The majority of the products and solutions in scope of this project are applied into critical infrastructure and in a huge variety of industrial and commercial applications globally, they target attractive markets and it is hence crucial that we maintain the competitive edge during the technology transition.

The project aims to prepare for a paradigm shift in power electronics that will boost the spread of smart electrical energy systems and secure competitiveness and growth of Danish power electronics industry in the next decade. New competences and work methods shall further significantly improve reliability-oriented design and testing, prototyping/development time of power electronics products for energy systems. It has the three specific goals below:

• A factor of 3 volume and weight improvement of kW converters used in variable speed drives and power supplies
• Reduce the power electronics products reliability testing time by 20%, and the maintenance cost and return rates by 50%
• Develop an integrated DfR2 Tool platform for industry product design or field operation lifetime extension; contribute to the reduction of LCoE of renewables and LCC of energy utilizations.

APETT project will give Danish universities and industry a unique chance to be on the front in terms of research and innovation in advancing power electronic technology and developing design and testing tools for a growing market - as 40 % of the electrical energy today is processed by power electronics – in 2040, this is expected to raise to 60 %.

The value of APETT will be seen in increased turnovers, new jobs and sustainable solutions maintaining and expanding existing businesses. Easy retrofit of drives to uncontrolled motors using existing unshielded cables is facilitated by improved harmonics performance. Upgrades to installed base of converters is facilitated, when increased performance and compliance to new regulations is offered in less space and with less loss.

We significantly improve our competitive edge towards new businesses, when our technologies offer reduced size, weight and cost while performance is increased. Reduction of time to market by 30% is expected by development of new workflows based on 3D tools and simulation driven development. This enables a virtual product realization process, where complex products and their production systems are developed and verified together with limited numbers of prototypes or testing. The DfR2 tools will give the companies a competitive advantage in terms of lower development as well as warranty costs and expenses for the operation and maintenance cost. 

The project will lead to new business creation worth DKK 2bn and sustain existing business worth DKK 15bn for the four commercial partners headed by Danfoss and Grundfos, who will invest at least DKK 200m in new product development during and after the project. Anticipated societal impact of the initiatives linked to APETT is 1,000 new jobs.
 

The overall project activities are shown in Fig. 1 below. It includes three important aspects to realize the vision and objectives of the project – Technology, tools, and demonstration.  The project activities are covered by six work packages WP1 to WP6, in addition to a project management work package WP0.  Please refer to the appendix file in title of “APETT schedule” about the Gantt chart, including work packages, time schedule, allocated resources, and milestones. 

FIG. 1 THE OVERALL PROJECT ACTIVITIES OF APETT

WP0 – PROJECT MANAGEMENT

A steering committee, commercialization advisory board, and a team of work package leaders will be established. The steering committee will have two meetings per year to evaluate the progress of the project and to ensure that the main project goals and objectives will be achieved toward the project. The project requires regular feedback from business and marketing sectors to address new market demand and its influence on the power electronics business. Monthly meeting will be held for work package leaders to discuss the daily project management. 

WP1 – SYSTEM ARCHITECTURE DEFINITION AND ANALYSIS

Key methods: Get overview of solution space for packaging, designs and topologies. Identify concept candidates and establish system architecture understanding to run succeeding work packages.

WP2 – INTEGRATED HARDWARE BLOCKS AND SOLUTIONS

Key methods: Investigate key technologies required for product demonstrators in WP6.3 to WP6.6

WP3 – SYSTEM LEVEL RELIABILITY AND ROBUSTNESS

Key methods:

1) Field mission profile collection – with database from industry partners in real market. 

2) Multi-time scale and multiple-stressors modeling – take into account time scales from ns to years and stressors of temperature, humidity, voltage, current, and vibration;

3) Reliability Block Diagram method and Weibull distribution with time-varying hazard rate.

4) Machine learning algorithms - real-time intrinsic parameter extraction for condition monitoring.

5) Robustness design. 

WP4 – RESOURCE-EFFECTIVE VERIFICATION TESTING

Key methods: Mission profile based testing – traditional accelerated testing is based on a constant stress profile, which is not closely relevant to practical application. 

WP5 – DFR2 TOOL PLATFORM

Key methods: 1) Reduced order modeling – provide computational-efficient interfaces among different level of tools. 2) Co-evolutionary multi-swarm Particle Swarm Optimization method – for multi-objective design of power electronic systems. 

WP6 – APPLICATIONS

The team behind this proposed APETT project possesses outstanding competencies in research and development of power electronics. The industrial partners are highly skilled in matching and foreseeing market needs, and developing the technical solutions of tomorrow. The university partners have great expertise in research in energy technologies, and have worked in this field for decades. The competencies of the team behind this project is the strongest possible in Denmark – and internationally – when it comes to power electronics and new methods for simulation, 3D design, reliability-oriented design and testing, and mapping of apparatus performance.

AAU is the highest-ranking Danish QS university in 2016 in the category Electric and Electronic Engineering, and the university has a world-class device package laboratory, cross discipline WBG team of physicists and engineers, and an internationally acknowledged research center in the area of power electronics reliability.  Further, the research competencies in power electronics at AAU are outstanding. 

SDU is an international leader in ultra-high-efficiency power conversion techniques. SDU conducts extensive research into the achievement of ultra-high conversion efficiency in power electronic converters.  CityU has long track record of doing research on studying various computational intelligence techniques and its application for power electronics technologies, and will be able to bring unique expertise into this project to develop cost-effective condition monitoring methods for power electronic systems, and computationally-efficient multiobjective optimization, which are essential parts of the developed DfR2 tool platform. Together, AAU, SDU and CityU guarantees the highest possible level of research available and decades of comprehensive collaboration with industrial partners.

Danfoss Drives is a world-leading player in the market for AC Drives and supplies to nearly all industry segments and to civil engineering projects. Danfoss Drives has 49 years’ experience and more than 5,000 highly skilled employees in this specific field. Grundfos is the world's leading pump manufacturer within industry, building services, water utility and dosing pumps with a 50% global market share. Grundfos’ technologies and competencies have continuously been developed and improved through close cooperation with leading universities and component manufacturers worldwide. 

Whereas Danfoss and Grundfos deliver mass-produced products to their global markets, Horsodan and Danfysik design power supplies for customers with very specific needs in terms of physical size, performance and efficiency of the power supply, and provide high quality accelerator systems and components for the particle accelerators and research laboratories, respectively.  VWS has invested significantly into competences and test facilities to increase understanding of failure mechanisms and verify robustness.  KK has expertise in power converters and wind turbine control, and field data collection of wind farms. The companies represent the key players in the energy industry in Denmark. They have excellent market positions in the respective field of wind energy (VWS, KK), motor drives (DD), pump systems (GF), power supplies (Horsodan and Danfysik), and provide strong feedback to the project from market and manufacturing experience as well as where are the real bottlenecks in product development.

Overall, the partners bring together a facilitative innovation culture, fruitful linkages and learning capabilities, and all necessary research, development and commercialization skills to ensure a successful APETT project.

EXIT STRATEGY

The project is established between partners with long-term relations and cooperation through the Center of Electrical Energy Systems (CEES - www.cees.dk) and knowledge will be shared during the project. Models development will continue at universities and in companies after finalization of the project.  Important Danish providers of wind turbines and subcontractors (e.g., Vestas, KK Wind Solutions), industry motor drives (e.g., Danfoss), pumps (e.g., Grundfos), and power supplies ((Horsodan and Danfysik) will apply the developed concepts, models, and tools for product design. 

The project will drive knowledge from TRL 2-3 to TRL 5 in a joint effort between companies and universities, enabling companies to convert the knowledge to new products and product improvements (TRL 6-9).  The project will in addition create the foundation for “digital twins”, which will continue to be developed to achieve better insights of the product lifecycle and create data for future improved simulation models and tools.