Design of Underground Power Electronics and its Thermal Management

Project description

Project Description

FLEXINet implements multi-carrier energy storage technologies in the built environment, making more sustainable heat supply and energy consumption. The smart system will improve the flexibility and sustainability of the electrical network by combining: BESS, reused batteries, vehicle-to-grid technology, flexible heat pumps, and thermal energy storage. Integrating the multi-carrier energy storage system is an important aspect of the FLEXINet technology. Therefore the placement of the underground thermal energy storage system and the high-energy battery becomes critical.

This research focuses on challenges associated with placing a multiport converter underground. Due to enclosed space underground, typical forced air convection cooling is ineffective. Whereas liquid convection cooling is expensive and consumes higher power due to the presence of the pump to move fluid through pipes and cold plates. Additionally, it also requires maintenance. Therefore cost-effective, low-maintenance cooling solution for the underground multiport converter is necessary.

The project goal is to design a cost-effective, low-maintenance thermal management solution that uses subsurface soil to dissipate the EV-charger DCDC converter's thermal load and demonstrate its effectiveness with experimental results. Further, this cooling solution should be scaled to all other ports in the multi-port converter. The application-specific requirements of EV chargers demand a DCDC converter to operate bi-directionally and at a wide voltage range. These requirements place several challenges on hardware design and modulation methods for EV charger DCDC converters. The novel method of thermal management increases the challenges of packaging passive and active components such that their effective thermal resistance is minimized for easy heat removal.

Ph.D. candidate:

Siddhesh Shinde s.s.shinde-1@tudelft.nl

Supervisors:  

Gautham Ram Chandra Mouli: g.r.chandramouli@tudelft.nl 

Promotor:  

Pavol Bauer: p.bauer@tudelft.nl  

Dit project wordt uitgevoerd met subsidie van het Ministerie van Economische Zaken en Klimaat en het Ministerie van Binnenlandse Zaken en Koninkrijksrelaties​

This project receives funding from Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate Policy and Ministry of the Interior and Kingdom Relations​