The Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB) nests the Electromobility Research Center (MOBI) and is a leader in electromobility, socio-economic evaluations for sustainable mobility and logistics, thanks to its experience of over 40 years. With its multidisciplinary team, it supports and studies the transition towards a more sustainable urban mobility and logistics system with the goal to achieve concrete and long-lasting positive socio-economic and environmental impacts. Its strength resides from the unique combination of environmental, socio-economic and technical competences, together with tools developed for the sustainable transport sector. MOBI’s research focuses on six domains: electric & autonomous vehicle technology, battery innovation, sustainable logistics, urban mobility and sustainable energy communities and power electronics.
Within VUB-MOBI, EPOWERS is a renowned research group in the field of power electronics, powertrains and energy systems with the vision to create a sustainable, emission-free, affordable, efficient and innovative technologies enabling tomorrow’s smart mobility, transport and energy solutions for everyone in the world. EPOWERS excels in power electronic converters, inverter systems, power supplies and intelligent systems such as battery management and smart charging systems with specific focus on various electric, (plug-in) hybrid vehicles and fleets. EPOWERS delivers highly advanced work on vehicle powertrains, where powertrains, multi-level and integrated eco-energy management systems (EMS) and fleet management systems are designed and optimized. EPOWERS also performs design and optimization of electric machines, assess their performances and apply novel control methods. Since future systems require a specific emphasis on smart energy solutions, EPOWERS performs R&D on design architecture and sizing of green assets, smart charging with V2X functionality, energy management and control systems. Furthermore, EPOWERS makes use of dedicated digital methods for digital twin & reliability of any related system in order to perform and develop novel reliability and failure models, digital twin approaches for fleet management and power electronics converters.
Role in the project
In the iSTORMY project, the VUB has been assigned the role of coordinator and the lead of Result 3: Modular Power Electronics Interfaces. In this WP, the VUB will develop the modelling framework of the PE interfaces designed by Zigor and PRODRIVE. Digital twins and failure prediction mechanisms will be further developed based on prototype testing data. Also, the VUB will investigate low-level control methods for self-healing functionalities linked to the use case requirements. In Result 4, they will contribute to the EMS algorithm for the use case with a high-level charging management system (HL-CMS). Also, VUB will be responsible for developing fast EMS online machine learning data-driven algorithms, based on aging maps from the battery system and failure mechanisms from the PE interface. The VUB will also support the demonstration at Concept Grid in Result 5 for the two use cases.
Website: www.mobi.research.vub.be/en/epowers-research-group
Country: Belgium
