DOE seeks development of optimized wind-compatible power converters for industry collaboration with potential cost savings, increased power performance, grid support and to move the grid connection power module from the wind turbine nacelle. Our project approach is to develop a much lower cost, smaller weight, smaller size solid state power converter (PFC PDK), utilizing commercial silicon carbide semiconductors, resulting in a high efficiency ac > dc power converter scalable to 500 Kilowatt or Megawatt power levels for DER, on shore, and off shore wind power turbines. Our PFC PDK located in the wind power nacelle can be connected via low cost cabling with the dc > ac grid connected power module located at the tower base or some distance away. Our Target for Phase I and Phase II development is a 480 Volt, 3 phase ac > dc DC pre- commercial power converter, with 98% power conversion efficiency, utilizing a scalable power module architecture. In Phase I we will use our existing 240 Volt, single phase, proprietary product as a prototyping platform to achieve two goals: develop computer aided design, modeling, and simulation software with our Research Institute Partner to use as a "digital twin" to evaluate hardware design alternatives, especially for control circuits, component load factor analysis, and energy efficiency for 3 phase ac > dc power conversion and prototype novel energy recovery and control circuitry to provide test data for the software "digital twin" and show high efficiency for 3 phase ac > dc power conversion. Commercial Applications include wind power converters, factory automation, grid power, data center power, and in general where 480 Volt. Other Benefits if the project is carried over into Phase II includes US jobs, advanced manufacturing using less high value resources, and US leadership in low cost high efficiency wind power converters. Our goals are to use fewer high cost parts while providing more electricity, remove the current need for large energy storage capacitor banks in wind power AC > DC conversion, and lower cost installation due to lower weight and size of power conversion unit and from separating from the wind turbine nacelle the grid interface power module, which can be at the bottom of the wind turbine tower.
