With the RICOSO system you can develop and test inverter control systems more effectively, and even before completion of your hardware.
The integrated RICOSO system provides the infrastructure to develop and test controls for power system inverters quickly, reliably and safely. The system consists of highly dynamic power amplifiers and can be programmed based on models using special libraries in the Matlab/Simulink development environment.
The different applications ensure accelerated development times and simplified workflows in development and test processes and help to achieve cost savings in development, faster market launches and lower risk.
There are many areas of application for the initial and further development of inverters, for research purposes and for training.
The integrated 43 kVA power converters are designed with SiC MOSFETS in 3-level topology, so that a high dynamic range is achieved at a clock rate of 70 kHz. Thanks to the 4-wire technology, symmetrical and asymmetrical operation is possible. For different power classes, up to five systems can be connected in parallel, which react identically. This means that up to 200 kVA of power can be generated or absorbed.
Services for power converter development, models and control methods
The Fraunhofer IEE research team develops and tests inverters, models and controllers for various applications. The models and controllers are programmed directly onto the target hardware. We realize efficient programming with SoM chips, which combine FPGA and microprocessors. For larger models such as grid models, it will soon be possible to connect real-time computers to the system. Here we develop and implement the necessary interfaces.
You can also benefit from our family of intellectual property rights for grid-forming power converters. In addition to a plug & play method, especially for weak grids and island grids, which does not require large inductances, we also have suitable current limiting methods in our portfolio. If you are dealing with SiC or GaN power converters, a very fast detection of grid faults could be promising in order to dimension filters smaller and use less material.
RICOSO's integrated development environment provides a model-based workflow with Matlab/Simulink. This allows industry standard libraries for control engineering from Matlab/Simulink to be supplemented and extended by specially developed and tested libraries from Fraunhofer IEE, which support the development and operation of safe and stable inverters.
They can either be designed directly on our development board and in future also connect real-time computers from various manufacturers. In particular, methods for controlling grid-forming power converters and suitable high-performance current limiting as well as fast grid fault detection for voltage deviations are implemented here, so that the inverters can still have grid-stabilizing and grid-forming properties.
Since grid-forming power converters ideally contain dynamic storage, a library with accurate models of various battery technologies is included, which enables a fast and practical demonstration of such battery storage systems.
Fraunhofer Institute for Energy Economics and Energy System Technology