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Richard Zhang receives funding from NREL

Nov 17, 2022


windmills
CPES Professor Richard Zhang was selected for funding from the U.S. Department of Energy's National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL).

State renewable energy targets and the national goal of 30 gigawatts (GW) of offshore wind energy by 2030, show strong government support for offshore wind energy development. Ensuring highly robust, safe, and efficient transmission and integration of abundant offshore wind energy into the existing AC grid is critical to achieving state and national deployment goals.

Multi-terminal HVDC systems are emerging to integrate bulk renewable energy, e.g., wind offshore, over long distances, or in a next stage could also be used for DC overlay grids. HVDC circuit breaker is a crucial enabling component in such systems.

Dr. Zhang's project titled, Understanding the Protection and HVDC Breaker Needs for Offshore Grid Developments in the Atlantic Region will evaluate stateoftheart HVDC breaker technologies and create a roadmap for their incorporation into offshore wind developments.

CPES has long focused on power electronics for renewable and distributed energy generation, says Zhang. And, we are positioned to expand the technology boundary to solve some of the toughest technical issues for Electrified Green Infrastructures, such as the Grid of the Future with accelerated renewable energy penetration and utility-scale energy storage, EV charging infrastructure, hydrogen production, microgrid/intelligent energy router, and power solutions for data centers. I'm excited to add another chapter to CPES' storied history in creating advanced electric power processing systems of the highest value to society. This effort with NREL is a nice example of our journey towards that direction

To learn more about Richard Zhang's research vision, Power Conversion for Electrified Green Infrastructure, see page 6 in the 2022 CPES Annual Report at this link: https://cpes.vt.edu/library/download/32035.

Learn more about https://cpes.vt.edu/news/news/975

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