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People / Ygor Pereira Marca

Portrait of Ygor Pereira Marca

PhD researcher

Ygor Pereira Marca

Phd | Medium-voltage ultra fast chargers

Institution
Eindhoven University of Technology
Work package
WP5 Medium voltage fast charging
In NEON
2020-2024
PhD
defended, 20 November 2024
Thesis
Single-stage MV-connected Charger: Enabled by a direct three-phase to single-phase ac/ac MMC
Now
Researcher in the Intelligent Electrical Power Grids group, Delft University of Technology (affiliation on a 2026 paper; title not verified)

WP5 PhD on modular bidirectional power conversion for MV-grid-connected ultrafast chargers.

Ygor Pereira Marca obtained his PhD at TU/e in 2024 on a single-stage medium-voltage-connected EV charger based on a direct ac/ac modular multilevel converter. He is a power electronics engineer working on converters for fast charging and grid applications.

About me

I love discovering how things work and new challenges as much as I love living abroad to know different people and cultures. I am a nature lover that chose electrical engineering as a job to help society with sustainable energy application problems. What makes me happier than making new friends is to introduce them to my old ones. I also like to play many sports like basketball, play the guitar and sing, just for fun. Finally, my perfect holiday would be hiking a mountain together with my girlfriend, friends, and family, challenging our bodies against nature to have a nice view, a day on the beach, or a delicious meal at the end.

Personal Motivation

I was born in a town inside the amazon rainforest. Since I recognize myself, I have tried to understand and enhance my behavior within nature, that is why I am vegan, and why I became an electrical engineer. I think NEON research represents the desire that led me to study power electronics. I am delighted in the development of eco-friendly technologies that aim to reduce dependence on fossil fuels, such as chargers, DC grids, and renewable energy sources. From where I came, my friends and family live in an opposite environment from what we are building with NEON. So, the opportunity to work with sustainable energy could make a difference in a global scale of energy consumption and this motivated me to move to the Netherlands. In other words, a positive impact here will influence there, since we all live on the same planet.

Ultra-fast chargers in the energy transition

My research area is based on power electronic converters. To be more specific, I am working with the development of ultrafast chargers for large electric transport that requires high amounts of energy in a short amount of time. Normally, these transports need high-power chargers greater than 500kW, necessitating a connection to the medium voltage electricity grid. The current state of the art makes use of a 50Hz distribution transformer for the conversion of the voltage to a lower voltage and isolation purposes. Therefore, the integrated chargers will make use of much smaller high-frequency transformers to achieve the required isolation by connecting the three-phase medium voltage grid to the batteries through bidirectional AC-DC and DC-DC converters. As a result, the charger will be more cost and volume effective. A single ultrafast charger design is not sufficient, as different applications require different power levels, and because the range of medium voltage levels in the Netherlands lies between 10kV to 25kV. Therefore, a new bidirectional modular multilevel converter application is being investigated to accommodate different voltage and power ranges. Additionally, ultrafast chargers introduce opportunities for grid support in terms of stability, frequency, voltage, balance, and harmonic correction, so they can be employed as a sensor for data analysis of grid parameters, such as power usage, power quality, stability, voltage, but also an online state of health estimation of the grid.

Link to other neon research

The development of a medium-voltage high-power bidirectional charger is the goal of work package 5. Therefore, it would be nice to exchange some research ideas with the DC electric grid, electric mobility, demand and storage, and smart hubs. I am curious to see their research outputs because of my research interests. Furthermore, it will be necessary to work close with regulation and standardization, since their inputs are decisive to make the ultra-fast successful in real-life without any regulatory barriers. Finally, I think it will be important to give some inputs and have some feedback from the integral model, which will enable the interdisciplinary cooperation between all work packages.

Profile text from the former NEON website.

✎ draft

Supervised by

Henk Huisman
Co-investigator · Eindhoven University of Technology Maurice Roes
Principal investigator · Eindhoven University of Technology

Publications and talks