Today marks the start of the EPE’20 ECCE Europe-Conference! This year’s edition is taking a very different form as a result of the covid-19 pandemic but it promises to be rich and engaging for the whole power electronics community nonetheless. We are very excited to be the Local Organising Committee of this event and to have our colleague Abdelkrim Benchaib honoured as the Conference General Chairman.

As Local Organising Committee, we were very much looking forward to welcoming you to Lyon but the covid-19 pandemic decided otherwise! Instead, we have worked to adapt and innovate alongside the conference organisers to bring you the first ever virtual EPE’20 ECCE Europe-Conference European Power Electronics conference and ensure the continuity and quality of this landmark event.

The organising committee, which found itself transformed into a Crisis Local Organising Committee, would not accept defeat, and has succeeded in ensuring that the 2020 edition will be a remarkable, memorable year, in spite of these extraordinary circumstances. We at SuperGrid Institute are very proud to have been involved in this edition.

Now that the conference is underway, here is an overview of SuperGrid Institute’s participation throughout the conference:

We are presenting no less than 14 scientific papers this year, covering some important topics in the fields of power electronics & HVDC control and operation. You can find the abstract of the publications here.

More information about the technical programme here!

From 9:00 to 9:30am, our CEO Hubert de la Grandière will give a keynote on “The role of collaborative research to support innovation for clean energy transition”.

• Making the transition towards clean energy requires a tremendous transformation of the current energy system. System structure, scale, economics, and energy policy must all be addressed in order to achieve significant change. Within the current sanitary crisis and its resulting impact on the economy, private sector industrial companies are looking to short term returns to boost their recovery rather than investing in long term R&D projects, thus further widening the gap between industrial and academic mind sets. But achieving energy transition requires coordination, collaboration & the creation of internationally recognised standards. How can we bridge the gap between academia and the private sector?

We have the privilege of following the keynote address given by Hélène Chraye, Head of Unit – Clean Energy Transition at the European Commission, on “A critical role for R&I for clean energy for the EU green and digital recovery”.

Meet Benoît Duretz, Sales & Marketing Director of SuperGrid Institute, at 11am for a vendor session !

• Energy transition requires the deployment of electricity highways which in turn call for major innovations in the domain of HVDC and MVDC systems and technologies, and power electronics in particular, to remove technological barriers and shape the power grid of the future. SuperGrid Institute is dedicated to developing technologies and solutions for DC grids. We provide innovative technologies and services to our clients and partners, drawing on industrial and academic unique expertise and multiple test platforms.

From 10:15 to 12:05. Our Hardware-in-the-Loop experts, chaired by Laurent Chédot, will demonstrate the non-selective protection systems for meshed HVDC grids which were performed as part of the PROMOTioN Project.

• The objective of the WP9 of PROMOTioN project is to demonstrate operation of the DC grid protection systems developed in the project using hardware in the loop real-time methods and in which a plurality of protection methods (or strategies) are tested: A Non-selective fault clearing strategies demonstration tests are carried out at the SuperGrid Institute (France), including Converter Breaker Strategy (CBS) and Full-Bridge MMC-based Strategy (FBS). During this session, live demonstration with pedagogic explanations and video sequences will be provided to restore the different elements of the validation: supervised start-up of the MTDC, fault-clearing strategies, and voltage and power restoration. Also in this session, you will have the opportunity to exchange and ask questions to the PROMOTioN project members.

From 1pm to 3pm. Piotr Dworakowski will chair a captivating Industrial Forum on “Novel power electronics technologies in power systems and transportation”. This exceptional gathering will bring together representatives from different industries to discuss their perspectives and experience in the domain.

• This session will discuss how Power systems and transportation are changing with a significant contribution of power electronics. The power electronics converters are expected to be efficient, reliable and cost effective. The innovations in the domain are ranging from grid architectures, converter topologies and converter technologies. This session will provide some insights from the industry perspective through several presentations and a panel discussion. The session will give the opportunity for the power electronics community to exchange on the experience of the innovative industrial companies such as: Compagnie Nationale du Rhône (France), ABB Power Grids Research (Sweden), Alstom (France), Siemens AG – Corporate Technology – Power Electronic Systems (Germany), Schneider Electric-Power Systems Center (France) and General Electric – Power Conversion (UK) and in different areas : Role of power electronics in future power grids and these power network will evolve, Energy management in railways system, DC grids application fields and new structures/topologies in PV power plants.

More information here!