In face of worldwide growing energy consumption combined with limited fossil fuel resources, a policy for an increasing adoption of renewable energy sources can be observed at almost all countries in the world. The nature of these sources, which is basically decentralized and often volatile, still remains a challenging issue. As examples, high power has to be collected in offshore wind parks and transferred to the industrial centres of Europe, while concentrated photovoltaic generation may compromise weak grid structures.

In order to address such challenges, a considerable increase on the application of electronic power converters will be necessary. Main objectives are to ensure not only compliance with basic power transmission requirements but also stability of these complex interconnected systems having volatile generation and demand. Flexible AC-transmission systems with innovative components figure as an increasingly interesting technique at all voltage levels to ensure grid stability and power quality. Controllable MV/LV transformers, active power transformers and electronic power flow controllers in combination with storages of different sizes may also be approaches for a re-design of the electric distribution and transmission grid. Entirely new perspectives are also opening up with upcoming high-voltage wide band gap semiconductor devices. This is huge emerging market in a multi-GW range for high power semiconductors.

The workshop is dedicated to these technical challenges, giving an overview about current developments and future perspectives of electronic power conditioners for the electric power supply system.
Time is also reserved to discuss specific aspects of this field of application like extended life time requirements and overload capability.

The workshop is chaired by Prof. Dr. P. Zacharias (University of Kassel) and J. Koszescha (ECPE).

All presentations and discussions will be in English.