Center Of Reliable Power Electronics (CORPE)

The European SET-plan and the Danish Research 2020 – Strategic Research Horizons are forcing the society to become more efficient by new technologies as well as more renewables in electrical energy systems – both initiatives need the
power electronics technology. There are two great challenges: the first one is the cost of failure, downtime, and maintenance becomes the bottleneck to further reduce the Levelized Cost of Energy (LCoE) from renewable generation; the second one is to develop efficient and reliable power electronics products that do not require long testing time to demonstrate its life expectancy before they go to market. CORPE – the Center Of Reliable Power Electronics – has been financed by The Danish Strategic Research Council in collaboration with Danfoss A/S, Grundfos Holding A/S, Vestas Wind Systems A/S and KK-Wind solutions A/S. Funding has been provided to operate from 2011 to 2016 at Aalborg University, Department of Energy Technology in collaboration with Department of Physics and Nano Technology. The Obel Foundation funded also a professorship in power electronics reliability, which now is going to be permanent. A strong motivation to support the center has been the need for a deeper understanding of reliability estimation and prediction methods as well as a need for tools in power electronic systems. Power electronics is a booming science and application area in connection with humans’ efforts worldwide towards renewables, i.e. green and safe energy sources. Renewables are simply not possible without power electronics, as electricity conversion is heavily needed from the source, such as photovoltaic panels, wind turbines and tidal generators, to the distribution network, which brings energy to cities and industries. CORPE’s vision has been to obtain high-reliability power electronic systems for use in all fields of electrical applications used both in design of equipment and operation where the main drivers are cost, efficiency, reliability, predictability, lower operational and maintenance costs during the lifetime operation. Such a vision has been supported by companies working in power electronics over decades and it has ensured clarity of goals and strategies during the project throughout the six years of activities. Long-term goals have been:
CORPE has in the funding period been able to be established as an international recognized center in power electronics and reliability engineering and sets the scene now in many aspects. New companies are approaching the center for collaboration, the scientific results have been many with many highly cited papers, the test infrastructure is attractive for others, close to 20 PhDs have graduated and many of them are in industry today, new projects have been initiated and Aalborg University has today a critical mass of researchers working on topics related to CORPE. Furthermore, courses are implemented at the M.Sc and PhD level as well as CORPE is holding 3-5 tutorials annually at major conferences around the world. Finally, new funding at the scale above CORPE is also ensured and has made the initiative sustainable, and the initiative was of high strategic importance when funded for the Danish society.