H-Bridges is a student team from the School of Electrical Engineering at the University of Belgrade, Serbia participating in the IFEC 2023 competition, organized by the IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers). Every year, universities from all around the world try to satisfy the jury's requests for a multidisciplinary project regarding energy efficiency and innovative designs.
Why is this competition so special?
The competition urges young engineers to focus on one of the essential parts of the inevitable green energy transition: the improvement of energy efficiency.
What is the topic of IFEC 2023 competition?
The goal of this year's project is to develop a high-efficient single-phase solid-state transformer (SST). The primary aspect of the SST concept is to increase the frequency of the signal passing throughout the transformer (by using a converter) in order to significantly reduce the volume of the transformer and therefore the entire device.
SST has found application in smart grids since it has the ability to fully control active and reactive power flows. Additionally, due to the very high switching frequency, it can meet the high demands regarding harmonic filtering. A significant feature of the SST is the possibility of autonomous management of a local micro- or nano-grid. Such transformers will take place of energy routers in future distribution networks. Furthermore, the SST has found application in the implementation of all renewable energy sources in existing distribution networks.
The constantly growing number of research regarding SST indicates that such devices will be the next revolution in the field of power electronics.
What do we need your help for?
Since being part of this team is voluntary and the project is regarded as extracurricular, we finance all of our activities by ourselves. Our expenses include:
- buying electric components for our prototypes, such as electric resistors, capacitors, coils, printed circuit boards etc;
- supplying our laboratory with the necessary assembly equipment: soldering iron station, coil winding machine, CNC machine;
- supplying our laboratory with the necessary measuring equipment: multimeters, oscilloscopes, various probes, thermographic cameras, voltage generators;
- covering travel expenses and accommodation costs for our team members for the semi-final round (held in Orlando, USA) and final round of the competition (held in Hannover, Germany).
These represent a large expenditure for undergraduate students ranging up to several thousands of euros, which is why we need your support : by donating a certain amount of money to our project you are providing us with better quality components, more precise measurements and bringing us one step closer to the finals!
In return, we will update you on the progress of our project. We would like you to see your donation's impact, so we will be posting about the advancements of out prototypes and the result of the competition.
Feel free to contact us if you have any questions and please share awareness of this fundraiser through social media and email!
We know that every contribution counts and we appreciate your support!
