Impact of Wide-Bandgap Technology on Renewable Energy and Smart-Grid Power Conversion Applications Including Storage

Alberto Castellazzi, Emre Gurpinar, Zhenyu Wang, Abdallah Suliman Hussein and Pablo Garcia Fernandez
Additional contact information
Alberto Castellazzi: Faculty of Engineering, Kyoto University of Advanced Science, Kyoto 615-8577, Japan
Emre Gurpinar: Electrical and Electronics Systems Research Division, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, TN 37830, USA
Zhenyu Wang: Power Electronics, Machines and Control (PEMC) Group, University of Nottingham, Nottingham NG7 2RD, UK
Abdallah Suliman Hussein: Power Electronics, Machines and Control (PEMC) Group, University of Nottingham, Nottingham NG7 2RD, UK
Pablo Garcia Fernandez: Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (DIEECS), University of Oviedo, 33203 Gijon, Spain

Energies, 2019, vol. 12, issue 23, 1-14

Abstract: Wide-bandgap (WBG) semiconductor devices are making their way into large-volume applications, including pivotal domains of societal infrastructure such as sustainable energy generation and conversion. Presented for a long time mainly as a synonym of high-temperature electronics, hands-on experience has highlighted a number of gains that can be drawn from this technology even when used as a straightforward drop-in substitute of silicon in established applications and field-proven designs. Incremental in nature, these gains enable interesting progress beyond state-of-the-art forms, which, though not corresponding to the full exploitation of the potential of this technology, are oftentimes sufficient to justify its adoption. With particular reference to renewable energy power conversion and solid-state transformation, in the context of transport applications and incorporating a storage device, this paper reports on the understanding generated over the past few years and points out some specifically tailored technology and circuit design requirements to ensure overall beneficial impact of the adoption of WBG technology.

Keywords: Wide-bandgap semiconductors; silicon carbide (SiC) MOSFETs; gallium nitride (GaN) HEMTs; renewable energies; power converter; multilevel inverters; dual-active bridge converter; energy storage (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/12/23/4462/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/12/23/4462/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jeners:v:12:y:2019:i:23:p:4462-:d:290067

Access Statistics for this article

Energies is currently edited by Ms. Agatha Cao

More articles in Energies from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().