Discovery Early Career Researcher Award - Grant ID: DE210100473
Funder
Australian Research Council
Funding Amount
$462,573.00
Summary
Breaking Performance Limits of Solar Inverters for a Sustainable Future. Micro-inverters offer a unique ability to maximise solar energy yield and streamline the installation, operation and maintenance process of solar power generation, thus having huge potentials to drastically reduce the cost of solar electricity. However, performance limits have hampered their wider applications in the energy sector. This project aims to tackle the performance challenges of micro-inverters by developing a nov ....Breaking Performance Limits of Solar Inverters for a Sustainable Future. Micro-inverters offer a unique ability to maximise solar energy yield and streamline the installation, operation and maintenance process of solar power generation, thus having huge potentials to drastically reduce the cost of solar electricity. However, performance limits have hampered their wider applications in the energy sector. This project aims to tackle the performance challenges of micro-inverters by developing a novel power-conversion architecture, a unified design framework, and a new control theory. The intended research outcome will be a new range of ultra-high-performance micro-inverters. This will promote greater solar uptake and maintain Australia’s leadership in the development of disruptive solar power generation technology.Read moreRead less
Need for Speed: Towards Controller Design Automation for Power Electronics. This project aims to address the need for advanced controller design automation tools for power electronics systems by advocating a novel design paradigm. The project expects to seek breakthroughs in the modelling and optimisation aspects of power electronics systems and generate new automation tools for existing and emerging power electronics applications. Expected outcome include significant reduction of controller dev ....Need for Speed: Towards Controller Design Automation for Power Electronics. This project aims to address the need for advanced controller design automation tools for power electronics systems by advocating a novel design paradigm. The project expects to seek breakthroughs in the modelling and optimisation aspects of power electronics systems and generate new automation tools for existing and emerging power electronics applications. Expected outcome include significant reduction of controller development cycle time and cost, minimisation of human oversight, and maximisation of system performance. Profound benefits include maintaining Australia’s leadership in a wide range of sectors such as renewable energy and electric vehicles demanding rapid development cycles and realisation of Australia’s zero-carbon vision. Read moreRead less
A Segmented Interior Permanent Magnet Synchronous Motor for Wide Field Weakening Range and its Sensorless Control using Improved Flux Estimators. Australia has the world's second largest reserve (after China) of high energy-density permanent magnet (neodymium-iron-boron) material for the IPM motor. The present limitation of the machine to be driven sensorless over a wide speed range with field weakening is believed to be holding back its widespread use in applications other than servo-type which ....A Segmented Interior Permanent Magnet Synchronous Motor for Wide Field Weakening Range and its Sensorless Control using Improved Flux Estimators. Australia has the world's second largest reserve (after China) of high energy-density permanent magnet (neodymium-iron-boron) material for the IPM motor. The present limitation of the machine to be driven sensorless over a wide speed range with field weakening is believed to be holding back its widespread use in applications other than servo-type which requires high-resolution mechanical sensors. Extension of the motor speed range by a combination of magnetic system design (for large field weakening range), and sensorless position and flux estimation with sufficient accuracy for fast dynamic control should lead to large scale adoption of this motor, and hence to significant improvement in energy efficiency and market share for Australia.Read moreRead less
Improvements of Direct Torque Controllers for the Interior Permanent Magnet Synchronous Motor. The Direct Torque Control (DTC) strategy has recently been applied successfully to the interior permanent magnet (IPM) motor which offers the highest torque/volume and efficiency of all known machines. Exploitation of the recently developed Neodynium-Iron-Boron material, of which Australia is the world's second largest producer, in the IPM motor and of new sensorless control strategies such as the DTC ....Improvements of Direct Torque Controllers for the Interior Permanent Magnet Synchronous Motor. The Direct Torque Control (DTC) strategy has recently been applied successfully to the interior permanent magnet (IPM) motor which offers the highest torque/volume and efficiency of all known machines. Exploitation of the recently developed Neodynium-Iron-Boron material, of which Australia is the world's second largest producer, in the IPM motor and of new sensorless control strategies such as the DTC controller, promises to open vast application potentials, such as in the upcoming hybrid and totally electric automobiles, for these motors. The new DTC controller developed at UNSW shows high promise for delivering a high-performance, sensorless IPM motor drive. This project aims to investigate, and overcome, the remaining problems of this technique.Read moreRead less
Advanced fault tolerant drives for safety critical applications. The key aim of this project is to develop an electrical drive system with enhanced tolerance to system faults. The research is significant as it aims to satisfy the demands of emerging high-reliability applications for electric drive systems utilising a patented concentrated-wound permanent magnet machine. Applications for the research include the automotive, aerospace and resource sectors which are global growth sectors. A new hig ....Advanced fault tolerant drives for safety critical applications. The key aim of this project is to develop an electrical drive system with enhanced tolerance to system faults. The research is significant as it aims to satisfy the demands of emerging high-reliability applications for electric drive systems utilising a patented concentrated-wound permanent magnet machine. Applications for the research include the automotive, aerospace and resource sectors which are global growth sectors. A new high-quality model of the machine is expected to be realised. This new model is proposed to then inform the development of suitable control techniques for the machine driven by fault-tolerant inverter topologies. The research is then planned to be demonstrated on prototype research machines and the system performance compared with existing state-of-the-art technology.Read moreRead less
Optimum rotor and concentrated stator-winding structures for improving the torque, field-weakening and power-density characteristics of interior permanent-magnet machines. The successful completion of this project will deliver one of the most energy efficient and compact motor which will meet the expectations of future electric and hybrid electric vehicles. The current generation of surface Permanent Magnet (PM) and Interior Permanent Magnet (IPM) motors are not optimized in terms of compactness ....Optimum rotor and concentrated stator-winding structures for improving the torque, field-weakening and power-density characteristics of interior permanent-magnet machines. The successful completion of this project will deliver one of the most energy efficient and compact motor which will meet the expectations of future electric and hybrid electric vehicles. The current generation of surface Permanent Magnet (PM) and Interior Permanent Magnet (IPM) motors are not optimized in terms of compactness, energy-density and efficiency, and torque characteristics. Australia has the world's second largest reserve of the magnet material for IPM machines. It also has a significant niche industry for specialized machine design. These twin advantages should offer Australia huge potential benefits in the world market for electric and hybrid electric vehicles and for substantial reduction in our dependence on importing petrol and greenhouse gas emissions.Read moreRead less
A new spectrum access technology for future wireless terminals. This project will develop a new frequency flexible wireless transceiver structure for the next generation of smartphones and wireless devices. The project will improve the roaming experience of travellers and reduce the cost of wireless connectivity, enabling new applications such as machine-to-machine communications and the internet-of-things.
Rapid Recovery from Radiation-induced Errors in Reconfigurable Hardware. This project aims to develop new methods for implementing satellite-based digital systems using reconfigurable hardware devices. The results aim to extend knowledge on the design of fault-tolerant systems and enable the use of off-the-shelf digital hardware in the implementation of satellite systems. The project aims to develop essential tools to assist in implementing fault-tolerant reconfigurable systems. These tools will ....Rapid Recovery from Radiation-induced Errors in Reconfigurable Hardware. This project aims to develop new methods for implementing satellite-based digital systems using reconfigurable hardware devices. The results aim to extend knowledge on the design of fault-tolerant systems and enable the use of off-the-shelf digital hardware in the implementation of satellite systems. The project aims to develop essential tools to assist in implementing fault-tolerant reconfigurable systems. These tools will be founded on the discovery of techniques needed for modifying a design into a form amenable to error recovery and for implementing the design in hardware. During the course of the project, these techniques will be demonstrated and tested in-orbit on the international QB50 CubeSat program.Read moreRead less
Design and Control of Sensorless, Brushless, Linear Permanent Magnet Motors for Fluid Pumping. Many machines require reciprocating motion and achieve it by mechanical conversion of rotary motion. In particular, pistons for liquid pumping and gas compression are usually driven by a crank on a rotary electric motor. Driving the piston directly by a linear motor eliminates the cost, weight, inefficiency and wear of the mechanical conversion. This project will design, construct and test high efficie ....Design and Control of Sensorless, Brushless, Linear Permanent Magnet Motors for Fluid Pumping. Many machines require reciprocating motion and achieve it by mechanical conversion of rotary motion. In particular, pistons for liquid pumping and gas compression are usually driven by a crank on a rotary electric motor. Driving the piston directly by a linear motor eliminates the cost, weight, inefficiency and wear of the mechanical conversion. This project will design, construct and test high efficiency, tubular, linear permanent magnet motors for fluid pumping. Further, an intelligent electronic controller will be developed to control the motor speed and reversals without sensors in the motor. Initial applications will be solar powered water pumping and purification.Read moreRead less
Development of Low Cost High Performance Motor Drives for Electrical Appliances using New Soft Magnetic Composite Materials. This project aims to break the major barrier to commercial production of efficient electrical appliances by developing low cost high performance motor drives using new soft magnetic composite materials. Initial applications will be swimming pool/spa pump drives. Optimum material composition, novel motor topologies, intelligent variable speed drive, and motor manufacturing ....Development of Low Cost High Performance Motor Drives for Electrical Appliances using New Soft Magnetic Composite Materials. This project aims to break the major barrier to commercial production of efficient electrical appliances by developing low cost high performance motor drives using new soft magnetic composite materials. Initial applications will be swimming pool/spa pump drives. Optimum material composition, novel motor topologies, intelligent variable speed drive, and motor manufacturing techniques using mould injection/compaction will be developed to reduce the production cost with improved performance in collaboration with Waterco. The new technology will contribute to reduction of greenhouse gas emission by reducing energy consumption of electrical appliances and once commercialised will greatly enhance the competitiveness of Australian industry in the world market.Read moreRead less