New European projects started in 2020

PROGRESSUS proposes a next generation smart grid, demonstrated by the application example “smart charging infrastructure” that integrates seamlessly into the already existing concepts of smart grid architectures thus keeping all necessary investments minimal and that will facilitate the accelerated transition by tackling three key challenges. The first challenge is related to power conversion: the objectives include reduction of losses in high power converters (e.g. smart charging and e-mobility), design of novel EV high power chargers with integrated battery storage aiming at reducing the peak power drawn from the grid, and the development of ultra-fast modularised charging stations. The second challegenge involves smart and trustworthy methods for new services and operation of energy supply infrastructure, for increased acceptance by the users and speed of the deployment. The targets include energy management for smart charging infrastructure, microgrids, and high resilience towards distributed denial of service attacks. The third challenge involves innovative metering and gateway components required by the  power converters and the smart and trustworthy methods mentioned before, in particular current sensors, trusted electronic hardware elements and appliances, which support value added services.

iREL 4.0 is all about reliability of electronic hardware. It focuses on the value chain chip-package-board/system, through modeling and simulation, through deepened understanding using physics of failure (PoF) approaches, with new materials, designs for reliability, real time feedbacks in production lines, improved tests, predictive algorithms and the use of all available data to learn faster with artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML). iRel4.0 will strengthen the European position in all of these domains and foster the role of European semiconductor solutions across industries. Hence, the explicit focus of iRel4.0 on spills prevention is clearly visible in its defined primary objectives. "Improve the Reliability by reducing the failure rate" and by this iRel4.0 will be a nucleus for a new European reliability expert community, enabling the differentiation in the electronic components and systems (ECS) industry.

ARCES participates in both projects as a linked third party with the IU.NET consortium.