Starting from September 1st, 2023, the Institute of Electronics and Computer Science (hereinafter – EDI) has started the implementation of a Horizon Europe KDT-JU project titled “Reliable Powerdown for Industrial Drives” (R-PODID).
R-PODID project 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 powerdevices like silicon-carbide (SiC) and III/V-semiconductor devices like gallium-nitride (GaN).
To achieve the objectives, 33 partners from 11 countries (Italy, Turkey, Portugal, the Netherlands, Czech Republic, Latvia, Greece, Lithuania, Germany, Austria, Romania) with a total budget of ~ €24 million are involved in the implementation of the project over 36 months.
Dr. Kaspars Ozols, EDI’s Deputy Director for Development and Senior Researcher, says:
“With the geopolitical situation, the energy crisis and rising electricity prices, it is crucial to continue and even increase investment in research to find new solutions that can make power electronics operate more efficiently and reliably. We are therefore very excited to have launched the R-PODID project with international partners such as Universita di Bologna, ARCELIK, BEWELL, SIGNIFY, STMicroelectronics, Fraunhofer, AVL, and many others, where developed solutions will be able to anticipate potential malfunctions of industrial hardware and functional fluctuations of power converters, preventing serious failures in various power electronic applications and strengthening the safety in the industrial sector.”
EDI will develop a custom high reliability (99.999% packet delivery ratio), high energy efficiency, flexible, configurable, and modular IIoT connectivity solution (HW+SW), suited for operation in harsh industrial environments. To do so, EDI will define requirements and specification as well as the architecture for the custom IIoT connectivity solution considering application needs such as bandwidth, pre-processing capabilities, latency, power and cost constraints, distance, interfaces, etc. Special focus will be put on robustness, reliability, trustworthiness and modularity. A deep analysis of final users’ processes under study will be performed based on different methodological techniques (life cycle management, Ishikawa diagram, Pareto, FMEA, e.c.), using all existing data coming from the application. When the solution will be ready, EDI will integrate it with power-electronics modules, sensors and prediction modules and test/validate their operation in industrial environment against the requirements. In addition, a demonstrator will be developed to show all the new functionalities of the proposed system.
The European Project R-PODID had its official kick-off on September 11th, 2023, with a 2-day event hosted in Cesena, Italy by the coordinator Univerity of Bologna.
For more information on the R-PODID project, please contact Dr. Kaspars Ozols (+371 67558161, kaspars.ozols@edi.lv).