Power Processing Architectures for Sustainable Power and Energy

Password: POWER

Power processing transforms energy to be used for work, extracted from clean power generation, or stored effectively and sustainably. My research focuses on power processing architectures and methods to harvest the power in solar photovoltaic (PV) systems efficiently and employ second-use battery energy storage systems (2-BESS) optimally.

First I introduce architectures and methods for differential diffusion charge redistribution (dDCR) solar PV modules. These modules enable maximum power point tracking with cell-level granularity, which extracts nearly all the accessible power from each solar PV cell. However, since dDCR solar PV modules have two output ports, the conventional one-port hardware cannot be integrated with them and new hardware is required.

In the second and third parts of my presentation, I investigate power processing architectures and methods in 2-BESSs for dc and ac applications. I present a new stochastic method for lite-sparse hierarchical partial power processing architecture to optimize 2-BESS power processing over lifetime degradation of batteries. Additionally, I introduce a framework for multilevel ac battery energy storage systems, which is particularly advantageous for 2-BESSs.

The last part of my presentation focuses on an accurate temperature measurement of active area for wide-bandgap semiconductors. These devices are suitable for many applications such as solar PV systems and 2-BESSs. However, the maximum power density of these devices is limited by the channel temperature rise. Thus, accurate temperature measurement of the active area is essential in research on wide-bandgap power semiconductors.

Chair: Professor Al-Thaddeus Avestruz