Wide-Bandgap Power-Electronic Spatio-Temporal Control using Real-Time Hardware-in-the-Loop Simulation
Abstract
Laboratory of Energy and Switching-Electronics Systems (LESES) in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the Univ ersity of Illinois at Chicago has been active in projects related to the Department of Defense research activities. Currently, with funding from the Office of Naval Research (ONR) and other federal agencies including National Science Foundation (NSF), Department of Energy (DOE), and Advanced Research Project Agency-Energy (ARPA-E), LESES has developed an advanced hardware testbed to facilita te testing of widebandgap (WBG) (e.g., SiC-MOSFET- and GaN-HEMT-based) power-electronics system (WBG PES) for scaled naval power sy stem emulating next-generation integrated t can be easily expanded to test several PES nodes with different power capabilities. Further, by adding faster, FPGA-based embedded controllers, it can support a wide spectrum of WBG power-semiconductor-device (WBG-PSD) switching frequencies and device switching- transition speeds. Additionally and most importantly, the addition of new high-performance embedded controllers to the existing tes tbed will allow the research team to advance on the design, development, prototyping and test of novel and scalable distributed mult i-scale spatio-temporal control systems and networks that can leverage existing controls that were originally developed for standalo ne WBG-PES. This will facilitate the integration of many WBG-PESs and their controllers on a highly scalable distributed coordinated control network. Therefore, the goal of this proposal is to develop, via the acquisition of a cutting-edge real-time distributed ( networked) system, a medium-sized real-time hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) facility that will provide the following capabilities: Build on existing standalone WBG-PES controllers; self-synchronizing controllers; leverage fast WBG-PSDs in new WBG-PESs using switching- transition and switching-sequence-based controls for naval WBG-PESs and networks; networked WBG-PESs and scalable network/distribute d controllers; supports white-rabbit based networks using fiber optics (pico-second resolution, clock-distribution); network complex ity analysis and self-adaptation for optimal performance; support for linear and nonlinear systems; and task-specific processors for math and linear algebra operations implemented on FPGAs. It is noted that the applicability of the proposed capability, aside for Navy, will also extend potentially to other research supported by agencies such as the other DOD agencies, NSF, ARPAE, Department of Energy (DOE) with applications including but not limited renewable energy, energy storage, pulsed power, smart and micro grid, e lectrical vehicular/locomotive systems, qautonomous vehicles, and integrated and interactive power-electronic/power systems. Incorp orating the new real-time-simulation-based HIL system (priced at $248,064) provided by the seamless interface of National Instrument s and existing WBG-PES controllers using a general purpose ultra-fast seamless hardware-software platform, comprising, respectively, of PXI, CompactRI (cRIO) and single-boardRIO (sbRIO) hardware system and software into the current research activities will enhance LESESs ability for temporally-granular as well as spatially-largescale naval synchronized, control network simulations and hardwa ration of advanced control algorithms and models developed by LESES with research activities of other groups (e.g., University of So uth Carolina, Florida State University, Purdue University, Virginia Tech) funded by ONR. Additionally, the flexibility of the Nation Opal-RTs eHS solver, which provides significant value-added.
Document Details
- Document Type
- DoD Grant Award
- Publication Date
- Oct 22, 2021
- Source ID
- N000142112933
Entities
People
- Sudip K. Mazumder
Organizations
- Office of Naval Research
- United States Navy
- University of Illinois Urbana–Champaign