This action, entitled “Development of high reliability motor drives for next generation propulsion applications”, is a 4-year research focused training program. It is aimed to form a coherent Research and Innovation Staff Exchange network so as to address technical challenges facing the electrifying transport industry, with a focus on high-reliability electrical traction drives. Transport electrification has been considered as a major advancement to reducing CO2 emissions and improving energy efficiency. At the heart of the propulsion systems are electrical traction drives. But technological developments are still at an early stage. Industries are trying out different traction drive technologies. Permanent magnet synchronous motors, induction motors, reluctance motors and DC motors-based traction drives are all found in use while they have their inherent advantages and drawbacks. In academia and industry, there are no consensus on the best traction drive for a single application. Existing technologies cannot meet the ever-growing market needs for safe, fast, green and affordable transportation. Major challenges include demands for very high torque density, power density, fuel efficiency and fault tolerance, pushing the devices and components to their physical and material limits. Particularly operating motor drives at high speeds and harsh environments require a new mindset of component and system design for safety-critical high-reliability requirements, as well as multidisciplinary approaches to combine multiphysics (e.g. thermal, stress) with the conventional electromagnetic and electronic designs. This program will bring together EU’s leading universities and industries, and utilise the latest technological discoveries in power electronics, motor drives, drivetrains and control, sensors and monitoring, communications, big data and artificial intelligence. The outcomes will be significant to impact on EU transport sector, EU research landscape and EU economy.

Silicon Carbide based power electronics use electrical energy significantly more efficient than current silicon-based semiconductors: gains from 6% to 30% are expected depending on application. TRANSFORM will provide European downstream market players with a reliable source of SiC components and systems based on an entirely European value chain - from substrates to energy converters. Its technical excellence strengthens the global competitive position of Europe. TRANSFORM improves current SiC technologies beyond state-of-the-art to serve large emerging markets for electric power conversion in renewable energies, mobility and industry. Substrate manufacturing process innovation will establish a new global standard: smart-cut technology allows high scalability, superior performance and reliability. Substrate and equipment manufacturers plus technology providers cooperate to increase maturity of the new processes from lab demonstration to pilot lines. Device manufacturers develop and tailor processes and device design based on the new substrate process, including adaptation of planarMOS and development of new TrenchMOS technology. Performance and reliability of devices is expected to increase greatly. For exploiting the potential of SiC devices, integration technologies and system design are improved concurrently, including new copper metallization processes for higher reliability and performance, module integration for high reliability and reduction of cost, and dedicated integrated driver technologies to optimize switching modes and parallel operation in high current applications. The project will demonstrate energy savings in applications (DC/AC, DC/DC, AC/DC) in the renewable energy domain, industry and automotive. TRANSFORM contributes to European societal goals and the green economy through significantly increasing energy efficiency by providing a competitive, ready-to-industrialized technology, strengthening Europes technological sovereignty in a critical field.

ECS4DRES targets the ambitious objective of pursuing flexible, coordinated, and resilient distributed energy systems developing several innovation activities, specifically: - realization of a multi-modal energy hub - exploiting renewable energy sources - realized by means of dedicated high-efficiency power electronics converters - multi-modal energy storage devices - sophisticated energy management algorithms enabling the local balances between energy production, storage, and consumption ECS4DRES will strengthen the long-term reliability, safety, and resilience of DRES by developing advanced monitoring and control technologies including integrated sensors provided with energy harvesting functions, capable of different types of detection for safety purposes, and for monitoring of energy transfers. ECS4DRES will also achieve interoperable and low-latency communication systems, as well as algorithms, AI tools and methods, enabling the widespread interconnection, monitoring and management of a large number of DRES, subsystems, and components to realize optimal energy management between sources, loads, and storages, to improve power quality and to enable resilient system operation. Most of all, ECS4DRES commits to perform a thorough validation of all the above with a set of 5 relevant use cases and demonstrators. By exploiting the project results, ECS4DRES will generate a wide range of scientific, technological, economic, environmental and societal impacts of global scale, fulfilling the needs of e.g., OEMs, DSOs, grid operators, EV charging station aggregators, energy communities, end customers, academia. ECS4DRES will provide interoperable and tailored solutions in the form of electronic control systems, sensor technology and smart systems integration for the deployment and efficient and resilient operation of DRES including integration of hydrogen equipment and components.

R-PODID (Reliable Powerdown for Industrial Drives) aims to develop an automated, cloudless, short-term fault-prediction for electric drives, power modules, and power devices, that can be integrated into power converters. Thereby, electrical and mechanical faults of machines and of the power converters driving them will become predictable within a limited prediction horizon of 12-24h. This will enable a power-saving shutdown of a larger number of production machines during idle times, because a looming failure during the next power-on cycle can be reliably foreseen. It will also enable reliable mitigation of dangerous faults in applications using modern power-devices like silicon-carbide (SiC) and III/V-semiconductor devices like gallium-nitride (GaN).