How can power electronics help the energy sector achieve the goal of "two-carbon"

Under the "double carbon" goal, the new energy system has accelerated the pace of planning and construction. As an important part of the new energy system, the new power system is a key carrier to help the energy transformation and achieve the goal of "double carbon".

In 2023, China's installed capacity of non-fossil energy power generation historically exceeded that of fossil energy power generation. According to the China Electricity Council's Analysis and Forecast Report on the National Power supply and demand Situation in the first half of 2023, as of the end of June, the cumulative installed capacity of non-fossil energy in the country accounted for 51.5%. With the increasing proportion of non-fossil energy in total power generation and total consumption, it is becoming urgent to build a new power system.

"In the next 20 to 30 years, we will see a lot of renewable energy entering the grid, becoming a distributed micro-grid, and integrating into a large grid system." There will be a lot of power electronics that will play an important role in the smart grid." Li Zeyuan, a foreign academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and director of the "Delta Power Electronics Science and Education Development Program" and the "Zhongda Scholars Program," said.

Technology helps energy conservation and carbon reduction

"Power electronics" is not a very daily word, but it has been widely used in all aspects of production and life. In order to make this technology more intuitive to understand, Li Zeyuan gave a simple example, any concept of "switch", if its purpose is not to process signals, but to deal with the transformation and transmission of energy, involves the application of power electronics technology.

This means that as small as our daily use of mobile phone chargers, frequency conversion air conditioners, large to travel in electric vehicles, high-speed rail, industrial power devices and clean energy grid connection, etc., are inseparable from power electronics technology. Therefore, the efficiency and quality of power electronic technology in energy conversion directly affects the energy saving and carbon reduction effect of many industries and fields.

Delta Group (hereinafter referred to as "Delta"), which has worked with Li Zeyuan for more than 30 years, is deeply influenced by Zheng Chonghua, its founder and honorary chairman. "Thirty years ago, people may not pay much attention to the problem of power loss, Mr. Zheng noticed, and passed the concept of energy conservation and environmental protection to every engineer in the company."

Under the strong promotion of Zheng Chonghua (left), founder and honorary Chairman of Delta, and Li Zeyuan (right), foreign academician of Chinese Academy of Engineering, Delta's "Science and Education Two Programs" have been successfully implemented for more than 20 years.

Delta was founded in 1971, relying on the core technology of power electronics, started from the power supply and components business, and now has grown from a small company of more than a dozen people to a multinational enterprise with 80,000 employees, providing power management and cooling solutions for the world. Li Zeyuan said that Zheng Chonghua has always maintained his enthusiasm for work, his love for technology, and his frugal attitude toward life for decades, which has influenced Delta to always put energy saving and carbon reduction on the priority of enterprise development and continue to make innovative breakthroughs in power electronics technology.

At present, the efficiency of Delta power products is more than 90%, the efficiency of communication power supplies is 98%, the efficiency of solar photovoltaic inverters is 99.8%, and the efficiency of automotive DC power converters is 96%. Between 2010 and 2022, its energy efficient products have saved approximately 39.9 billion KWH of electricity for customers worldwide, equivalent to a reduction of 21.05 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions.

"We have built distributed smart grid and energy storage solutions in many places to enhance grid resilience with technology, and hope to do our part for energy transformation with action." In Zheng Chonghua's view, in order to deal with the climate crisis, the construction of a new power system with new energy as the main body is an important way to promote the clean and low-carbon energy transformation and help the "double carbon" goal, which has a lot to do with the development of power electronics disciplines and technologies.

With Delta's core advantages in power electronics technology, Zheng Chonghua and Li Zeyuan have devoted more than 20 years to promoting domestic power electronics education and talent training. Li Zeyuan bluntly said that in the past two decades, the development of power electronics technology in China was beyond his expectation.

Cultivate "seeking good" talents

The year 2000 was a turning point for China's economic take-off and the development of power electronics in China. Before this, there were not many domestic universities offering this subject.

"Electronics is an applied discipline that is closely integrated with areas like industry, and technology transfer happens all the time as long as things are done well." Li Zeyuan said that many companies are not aware of the need for power electronics technology until they have developed.

"If enterprises want to find talents, they first target teachers in colleges and universities. But at that time there were not many experienced teachers, and companies wanted to poach teachers. So how can power electronics be revitalized?" He suggested to Zheng Chonghua that if he wanted to do something about education, he could do two things: one is to develop the power electronics discipline, and the other is to provide "unconditional" research funding for the relevant schools.

Since Delta entered the Chinese mainland market in 1992 and established Zhongda Dentsu, Zheng Chonghua has been thinking about how to play the power of the enterprise to make some contributions to education.

Under the joint initiative of Zheng Chonghua and Li Zeyuan, Delta has set up the "Delta Power Electronics Science and Education Development Program" and the "China Delta Scholars Program" (hereinafter referred to as the "Science and Education Programs") since 2000 to promote the talent training of power electronics and electrical transmission and other related disciplines in universities and encourage outstanding scholars who have made innovative research contributions in this field. The project has invited Tsinghua University, Zhejiang University, Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Xi 'an Jiaotong University, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Shanghai University, Harbin Institute of Technology, Beijing Jiaotong University, Shanghai Jiaotong University and Hefei University of Technology to participate in 10 key universities, and since 2023, North China Electric Power University and Hunan University, a famous university of electric power system, have been invited to join.

For the strength of cooperative institutions, Li Zeyuan said that it mainly depends on the importance of the school to the subject of power electronics. If we pay attention to it, we will make more efforts so that they can go one step further. It is hoped that through Delta's "Science and Education Two programs", more talents will be encouraged to enter the field of power electronics.

As a "high-yield" technical researcher, Li Zeyuan has made outstanding achievements in the field of high-frequency power conversion and power electronic systems. His soft switching technology and multiphase voltage regulation module technology have become the core technologies of modern power electronics and are widely used around the world. And he has only one piece of advice for young talents in the new era: "Play your ability and maintain a 'good' mentality." In his view, there is no limit to human ability, not limited to "what I can only do." This is similar to Delta's "dedication" to energy conservation and carbon reduction.

Cross-border integration to build a new type of power system

At present, the world is accelerating the transformation of the energy structure, and China's installed capacity of non-fossil energy power generation has historically exceeded that of fossil energy, which has brought positive impact on the world. According to the "Renewable Energy Capacity Statistics 2023" of the International Renewable Energy Agency, China contributed about 48% of the global total renewable energy capacity increase in 2022. Two-thirds of the world's new hydropower capacity, 45% of new solar capacity, half of new wind capacity and 57% of new bioenergy capacity were deployed in China that year.

With the increasing proportion of non-fossil energy power generation and total consumption, "building a new power system with a gradually increasing proportion of new energy" has become the general trend. In the development and utilization of new energy, power electronics technology will play an important supporting role.

Twenty years after the implementation of Delta's "Science and Education Two programs", Li Zeyuan made a new proposal to Zheng Chonghua and Delta, that is, to promote the development of "cross-border integration" in other fields such as power electronics and power systems.

"The power system of the future will be many times larger than the current power system, and power electronics are the 'protagonists' in this transformation." In the past, power electronics and power systems were two different fields, they did what they did and we did what we did, but they have to work together for the next 30 years." Li Zeyuan said.

Therefore, from this year, Delta, on the basis of the original "Science and education programs" funding scope, officially launched the "Electric electronic new power system special" funding, two projects a year, providing research funds of 3 million yuan each, to encourage interdisciplinary and cross-field cooperation among universities.

Delta, which takes "environmental protection, energy saving and love the earth" as its business mission, has always regarded "seeking change" as its driving force. From the component supplier in the TV era, to the leading manufacturer of power supplies in the PC era, and now the provider of environmental protection and energy-saving solutions, in recent years, it has gradually occupied an important position in the field of industrial automation, building automation, communication power supply, data center infrastructure, electric vehicle charging, renewable energy, energy storage and video display and other product solutions.

Each transformation of Delta has stepped on the beat of The Times, and it seems natural, and behind it is the thinking of "seeking change", actively exploring the forward-looking application of power electronics core technology, and preparing for energy saving and carbon reduction and the layout of the future.