AIT Austrian Institute of Technology | Zoran Miletic

Background

For almost two decades Zoran Miletic has been leading product development of power electronics converters for Renewable Energy Applications at Xantrex Technology Inc, in Canada and Schneider Electric Solar, Europe and Canada.

Since 2014 he has been with AIT Austrian Institute of Technology as a Senior Electrical Engineer. His experience includes the design of power electronics and the control methods for solar MPPT charge controllers, single and 3-phase solar inverters from few KW to several hundred KVA. He is a senior member IEEE and holder of several US and International utility patents.

Challenge

Over the last ten years, the Austrian Institute of Technology (AIT) has established itself on a global scale as a premium provider of certification services of PV inverters. Testing compliance of PV inverters according to different international grid codes and standards, such as German BDEW, is very cumbersome for PV inverter manufacturers. Very often PV inverter manufacturers find it very difficult to pass a particular certification. This results in a lot of shipping fees as the inverter goes back and forth between the manufacturer and the certification body, but, more importantly, it results in lengthy and costly delays in bringing the product to the market.

In order to make the process as streamlined as possible for inverter manufacturers, AIT wanted to create a toolbox which would allow the manufacturers to send their inverters for certification only when they can be sure that they would actually pass.

C-HIL for pre-certification

In partnership with Typhoon HIL, AIT used the high-fidelity real-time controller hardware in the loop (C-HIL) technology to develop a pre-certification toolbox which allows manufacturers to pre-certify their inverters in-house. The toolbox supports various grid codes and international standards, such as BDEW, and includes all the test scenarios which the inverter has to pass. This way, PV inverter manufacturers can run standardized tests in-house and check how their controls are performing in all test cases. This makes it possible for PV inverter manufacturers to certify their inverters in one go, cutting the time market.

Additionally, C-HIL from Typhoon HIL allows AIT to provide better services in the domain of designing controls, making Typhoon HIL "the tool of choice" for a wide range of Smart Grid applications.

For more details, please visit the official site of AIT's SmartEST Laboratory.