Japan - Norway research cooperation on control of grid connected power electronics converters

The project aims at establishing a long term cooperation between SINTEF in Norway and Japanese universities in the area of power electronics. More specifically, the project supports networking activities and research stays of Norwegian scientists in Japan and of Japanese scientists or students in Norway. In the past three years, joint research activities have been carried out between SINTEF, the University of Tokyo and the Nagaoka University on control of power electronics and on wireless power transfer for vehicle applications.

Future power systems are expected to face new challenges as traditional generation units with synchronous machines are replaced by energy sources interfaced with power electronics converters. Indeed, this trend can reduce the equivalent inertia and damping of the power systems and introduce instability problems. This trend is also confirmed by the current research activities in the area of SmartGrids where growing penetration of power converters units is envisioned at a distribution grid level to integrate local generation and energy storage units. The project aims to reinforce existing research activities in Norway and in Japan by promoting international cooperation and by facilitating exchange of expertise on control of power electronics converters for grid interface of distributed energy units. The research groups will jointly explore the control aspects of the Virtual Synchronous Machine (VSM) as a general approach for controlling grid-connected power electronics converters. Based on the existing activities, the research groups will investigate the applicability of the concept in different application contexts. The Norwegian research group will focus on the application in the offshore environment for controlling HVDC terminals connected in parallel or in the control of wind turbines. This will complement existing research on VSM sponsored by an internal project and research on HVDC transmission in the KPN ProOfGrids and in the EU FP7 project Bestpaths. The Japanese research group will investigate the potential of VSM for charging electric vehicles and providing grid services. This will complement the activities within the University of Tokyo related to the development of efficient and grid-friendly static and dynamic EV chargers.