Conference Agenda

Electrification of the transportation industry and large-scale integration of renewable energy sources into the power grid represent some of the most disruptive transformations of our time. This engineering field brings ideas from Computational electromagnetics, power and energy, electromechanics, IoT, and artificial intelligence. This enables the creation of efficient, reliable, safe, and environmentally friendly means of implementing these ideas in new applications.

In this presentation, we will share our views on the future of these applications through a detailed discussion of the roles of computational modeling, Power electronics architectures, devices, the embedding of components, challenges of utilizing magnetics, and thermal management under higher operational frequencies, currents, and voltages. We will discuss packaging issues and describe some applications requiring increased power densities. This part of the presentation will identify the research areas that promise high impact and potential for achieving improved performance.

This paper analyzes the overall losses and efficiency of an Electric Vehicle (EV) traction system within the rated speed range across different switching frequencies and explores how switching frequency and current quality affect the losses in the Interior Permanent Magnet Synchronous Motor (IPMSM) and the inverter. To minimize system losses, an adaptive switching frequency control strategy is proposed, which dynamically adjusts control parameters according to varying speed requirements. Simulation results confirm the effectiveness of the proposed approach.

This paper presents a method for integrating sustainability indicators into the design of a power electronic converter. The work is based on a set of technological models and constraints that are integrated with a gradient based algorithm to form an optimization tool capable of designing Voltage Source Inverters (VSI). Sustainability models are added considering 2 indicators from the Eco-Invent database : Global Warming Potential (GWP) and Metal and Mineral Resource Depletion (MRD). The methodology is applied to 2 case studies, in order to analyze the results under different conditions. The analyses show that technological indicators, such as power density or energy efficiency are not sufficient to ensure a sustainable converter design, especially when the use time is short.

The decarbonization of the maritime industry is crucial for mitigating climate change. Achieving this involves increasing power generation efficiency, using non-fossil fuels, and improving overall ship efficiency. This study introduces the Maritime Energy System Optimizer (MESO), a modular software platform designed to enhance ship concepts through holistic synthesis, design, and operation optimization of sector-coupled ship energy systems. MESO supports the ship development process at various levels of detail, from concept to contract design, enabling more informed decisions and reducing unnecessary iterations compared to conventional heuristic approaches. Validation studies, based on a 2018 cruise-liner with >30 MW propulsion power and high demand granularity, demonstrated MESO’s effectiveness. The optimized energy systems are at least 4.4 % cheaper than conventional systems, primarily due to integration of storages for peak shaving. MESO is designed for easy expansion and will be extended to include partial load efficiency, demand-side management, and load profile generation.