VERNEDCT - Resource-efficient energy distribution grid through DC technology

Duration: 2023 - 2029

The project is funded by the Carl Zeiss Foundation as part of the "Breakthroughs" program, see Carl Zeiss Foundation project overview. The Department of Power Electronics and Controls in Electrical Power Engineering is one of six departments at Ilmenau University of Technology involved in the interdisciplinary project. Further information can be found on the VERNEDCT project homepage.

Motivation

In its current form, the distribution grid for electrical energy usually uses a medium-voltage and a low-voltage level, which are implemented using alternating voltage technology. This realization is mainly due to the historically available technologies in connection with the property of AC voltage that it can be spanned by transformers. However, the availability of power electronic systems has changed the framework conditions so that the use of DC voltage for the distribution of electrical energy appears to be advantageous. This process has already begun in the field of electrification of industrial plants, as DC voltage offers the following advantages:

  • The effective value of the voltage corresponds to its maximum value.
  • As power electronic systems usually work internally with a DC voltage, the conversion stages that are currently required for connection to an AC voltage network can be omitted.
  • The contribution to the short-circuit current can be easily limited for loads and generators connected via power electronics.

However, these advantages are offset by technical and, above all, economic hurdles. This research project therefore aims to investigate the suitability of DC voltage technologies for solving the distribution problem of electrical energy and to help propose solutions to problems that still exist.

The visualization was created by Alperen İzcankurtaran as part of his ERASMUS+ internship.

 

Completed student projects

Hatice Aydin: Investigations on the use of different transformer models for DAB converters, internship, 2025.

Alperen İzcankurtaran: DAB-Visualization on this website, ERASMUS+ internship, 2025.

Oliver Dahl: Study of Transformer Models used for Dual Active Bridge Converters, research project, 2024

Publications

Beckmann, C., Schmitz, Ph., Gensior, A.: "A Fourier-Series Modeling Approach and Loss Minimization for a Dual Active Bridge" in 51st Annual Conference of the IEEE Industrial Electronics Society (IECON 2025), DOI: 10.1109/IECON58223.2025.11221168