The platform consist of a number of research ideas and hypotheses in order to achieve the key goals:

Connecting solar and wind power units to the grid are traditionally considered as a disturb-ance of the grid and the idea here is to change this paradigm so the units are designed much better to support the grid by more efficient and intelligent power electronics. The interconnection of wind turbines to the grid in large wind parks or smaller groups affects the grid as it receives the generated power. Typically, the customers are the utility companies and a strong cooperation is seen between them and the manufacturers in the project phases. IEPE will pro-vide new interfacing and control technology to increase the number of wind turbines in the grid in order to extend the zone of site possibilities. The utility can use the existing grid – and post-pone or eliminate a costly grid extension. The market has a strong need to enable the connec-tion of as many wind turbines as possible into the existing grid and by that saving billions on grid strengthening. The technology will be a strong sales argument for the participating company’s products. Some of the technology is also portable to the solar power.

Internal interconnection of the wind turbine power electronic converters is used to obtain a high power by paralleling single units as well as to reduce system cost and increase CoE. Pres-ently, the standard is to use interconnecting inductances between the paralleled inverters and one idea here is to eliminate the use of interconnection inductances since they are relatively expensive, bulky and heavy. Also the losses in the passive components are an issue. Instead, precise and advanced control of the power semiconductor devices in the converters is needed.

New type of sensor and monitoring technology will be developed for IGBTs and diodes, where the IGBT is not only protected against short circuit current but also the health states of the devices are monitored in order to obtain a higher reliability. Such technology requires inno-vative ideas to enable a measurement of device state e.g. measurement of on-state voltage drop with an mV resolution – known systems only use a simple threshold to detect if the device is short-circuited. The idea is to have information about the system state from each power semiconductor device. Interpretation of this information is used locally in the converter but it can also be sent to a remote server facility monitoring the overall health state – including remaining lifetime of all devices. This technology is so complex and new, so it is developed for MW wind turbines first, but the idea is also relevant for W and kW applications and the potential benefits of the idea are many.