Korneel Wijnands

About me

I am an optimistic person, that believes that technology should help to prevent climate change. We can and should start to reduce our ecological foot print for our own situation. Simple things can make a big difference. I reduced our family footprint by installing isolation, solar panels, a heat pump and moved to driving electric. As an electrical engineer I want to boost the energy transition. For me this means enabling industrial electrification, by using power electronic conversion, with great opportunities for the Dutch industry. The best way to reach this goal for me, is to combine scientific research as (part-time) Professor in Electrical Power Conversion Technology at the TUe, with product development of industrial power systems at Prodrive Technologies. I like to work with enthusiastic young students and professionals.

Personal Motivation

The NEON project helps to achieve my goals in further electrification of industry and mobility. Besides working on the scientific challenges it will definitely help the Dutch industry to become a relevant player in this field. I like the cross over aspects of this program, because technology alone will not drive the necessary changes. It is great to learn from the other scientific and industrial experts what can help to change the world, starting in the Netherlands. For fast charging of large vehicles such as buses, trucks and ships, a high power connection to the grid is required. Nowadays these chargers are fed by a transformer station that converts the Medium voltage to Low voltage. With the technology, developed in Neon, the classical transformer can be significantly reduced and integrated in the charger. In the end, this will save space and cost. My main contributions will be situated in work package 5, where medium voltage fed charging is researched by 4 PhD’s supported by staff and many students. The many involved Industrial and governmental partners will help to connect the research with social challenges and limitations.

Medium Voltage charger technology

• Topic / PhD 1: Charger supported MV grid capacity optimization with societally desirable incentives and business models
• Topic / PhD 2: Modular bidirectional power conversion for MV grid-connected ultrafast chargers
• Topic / PhD 3: Power converter and control architectures with extended lifetime and zero downtime
• Topic / PhD 4: Scalable distributed control techniques for networks of grid connected high-power chargers

Link to other neon research

• Storage for peak-shaving for wind and PV generation and energy demand (WP1+3)
• Interaction with industrial markets and aggregators (WP3)
• Planning and requirements for ultrafast charging of truck and ships at Smart Hubs (WP6)
• Insight in societal, legal and environmental bottlenecks and how to mitigate them (WP7+8)
• Standardization of charging and grid interactions (WP8)
• Contribute reduced order charger model to integral model (WP10)
• Dissemination – Papers, patents, conferences, PhD theses (WP12)