FEN Prize poster at FEPPCON

At the 2022 IEEE Future of Electronic Power Processing and Conversion (FEPPCON) meeting, a jury of experts, as well as the attendees, selected the poster submitted by Prof. De Doncker on medium-voltage DC grid structures as the most relevant bold idea for the next generation of power electronics. FEPPCON is the strategic planning meeting of the IEEE Power Electronic Society looking into the R&D needs for the next decades. In his poster, entitled „The War of Currents – how DC technology lost the battle 150 years ago, but may win the war exploiting its full potential in a volatile, liberalized energy world“ Prof. De Doncker stresses the need for cellular distribution grids that enable increased use of dispersed energy sources and sector coupling. DC power converters not only enable such distribution architectures, but also consume far less materials, thereby reducing costs and the ecological footprint of the electrical grid. Taking into account that electrification of all sectors requires a considerable increase of electrical energy, that about 1 Billion people still have no access to electricity, and that the supply of materials such as copper is limited, the need to move to DC solid state transformers that operate at higher frequencies (than 50 Hz) will become a necessity.