Principal Investigator: Dr. Feng Guo
Due to the global ambition to achieve net zero carbon emissions and the transition toward using hydrogen-based e-fuels instead of fossil fuels, the future demand for hydrogen (H2) is expected to increase by a factor of more than ten in 2050. Although not widely used as a transportation fuel, researchers are working on the advancement of clean, economical, and safe hydrogen production and fuel-cell electric vehicles and even aircraft. As a potentially emission-free alternative fuel, hydrogen production can use the water electrolysis method. To further purify the carbon footprint in the source of electricity
for electrolyzers, renewable power like wind turbines is promising to gain renewable hydrogen production, thereby fulfilling increasing nationwide hydrogen demand. As a key enabler for power-to-hydrogen (P2H), the state-of-the-art thyristor-based converters must withstand thousands of amperes with rated power of hundreds of kilowatts, resulting in low power factor and efficiency, and severe harmonic pollution. Besides, electromagnetic interference (EMI) noise becomes a prominent issue. To avoid harmonic pollution in a range of a few kHz to tens of MHz to the power grid and compensate for reactive power, bulky
and costly filters are needed. These limitations call for developing new, drastically improved solutions for application-specific converters alongside evolving technologies. Therefore, as stated in the Needs Document PD1.3, PES1 and M1.3, developing proprietary design and control for wideband-gap (WBG)-based modular-paralleled (MP) three-level (3-L) active-neutralpoint-clamped (ANPC) power-electronics-building blocks (PEBBs) is proposed to address the challenges described above
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