Ygor Pereira Marca

My research area is based on power electronic converters. To be more specific, I am working with the development of ultrafast chargers for large electric transport that requires high amounts of energy in a short amount of time. Normally, these transports need high-power chargers greater than 500kW, necessitating a connection to the medium voltage electricity grid. The current state of the art makes use of a 50Hz distribution transformer for the conversion of the voltage to a lower voltage and isolation purposes. Therefore, the integrated chargers will make use of much smaller high-frequency transformers to achieve the required isolation by connecting the three-phase medium voltage grid to the batteries through bidirectional AC-DC and DC-DC converters. As a result, the charger will be more cost and volume effective. A single ultrafast charger design is not sufficient, as different applications require different power levels, and because the range of medium voltage levels in the Netherlands lies between 10kV to 25kV. Therefore,  a new bidirectional modular multilevel converter application is being investigated to accommodate different voltage and power ranges. Additionally, ultrafast chargers introduce opportunities for grid support in terms of stability, frequency, voltage, balance, and harmonic correction, so they can be employed as a sensor for data analysis of grid parameters, such as power usage, power quality, stability, voltage, but also an online state of health estimation of the grid.