Iqbal Husain

Associate Member with FREEDM Systems Center

New agreement for Full Membership.

Co-led by NREL, University of Washington, and EPRI, the Universal Interoperability for grid-Forming Inverters (UNIFI) Consortium will address fundamental challenges & develop solutions to seamlessly integrate grid-forming (GFM) inverters into electric grids alongside machines and other inverter-based resources (IBRs) at any scale. UNIFI will engage researchers, industry partners, utilities, and other stakeholders to form an ecosystem that will adopt a systems-oriented approach to conduct research, development, & demonstration; define functions to prove vendor-agnostic interoperability while conforming to system rules; & develop workforce training courses for planning, designing, & operating grids with high level of GFM IBRs.

North Carolina State University (NCSU), in collaboration with Danfoss, New York Power Authority (NYPA), Commonwealth Edicon (ComEd), GoTriangle, and the North Carolina Clean Tech Cluster will research, develop, and demonstrate ultra-low cost, all-SiC modular power converters for DC fast charging equipment connected directly to a Medium Voltage (MV) distribution system. The system will deliver a 1 MW front end, while enabling scalable charging and generation integration, with changing ports serving 100-500kW per stall at voltage of 200-900V. Therefore, the proposed station will be capable of supporting today's electric vehicles (EVs) as well as the next generation of vehicles operating at higher voltages and faster charging rates. The system will feature reconfigurable firmware, allowing the same design to be used as a front end for feeding a DC microgrid or for direct power delivery to the vehicle. The system medium-voltage front end will feature high bandwidth control to actively improve the local power quality, thus providing ancillary services to the grid. The project entails two phases: a cost analysis and system development phase (Phase 1) and a system demonstration phase (Phase 2). The cost analysis task will help set measurable system-level cost targets to provide the lowest cost of ownership system on the market. We will achieve this aim by quantifying the target converter costs and benefits of direct connection to MV (i.e., higher efficiency, provision of ancillary services, lower installation costs, and smaller footprint). In parallel, by implementing the design innovations outlined in this proposal, we will develop the ultra-low cost fast charging equipment, meeting the set target converter costs, and will collect reliability and performance data from the baseline system which will be in operation at a NYPA site in Marcy, New York (NY). In Phase 2, we will deploy the newly-developed system at demonstration sites run by our industry partners. Possible demonstration sites include a proving ground at ComEd in Chicago, IL; a location that is made available by NYPA such as a NY turnpike rest stop in NY, and a GoTriangle bus depot in NC.

New agreement for full membership.

New Membership

This DOE proposal will develop new machine-learning based algorithms for detection, localization and mitigation of different types of cyber-attacks in electric power systems.

Microgrids (MG) deliver highly resilient power supply to local loads in the event of a power outage, while improving distribution system reliability by reducing the load on the system under stress conditions. Networked microgrids that coordinate with each other and the distribution system operator increase reliability and resilience further by improving the diversity of the generation assets and loads. Microgrids are also widely considered as an essential technology to address the challenges of climate change.

FREEDM Membership, Affiliate Member

Research in single stage solid state transformer (SST) development. A challenging aspect of SST development is maintaining high efficiency while improving the power density and reliability. The project goal is to achieve 99% efficiency for a 20kW single-stage AC-SST at module voltage ratings of 480V input and 480V output and to explore the feasibility and scalability for such technology at 35kVac and 10MVA levels. The goal will be achieved with simplified modular topology and a novel control method that will provide soft-switching operation over the entire operating range.