October 2020 COMET News | Comet Consortium

September 30, 2020

News:

Awarded with the ARPA-E project "High Power Density Motor Equipped with Additively Manufactured Windings

Integrated with Advanced Cooling and Modular Integrated Power Electronics", which is coordinated by Marquette

University and where at CAPS take care of the insulation system design, testing and, in the second phase, possibly

monitoring.

Obtain funding (to be partly paid back) to purchase a chamber endowed with variable pressure, humidity, broad

range of temperature and high voltage up to 50 kV. We hope to have it installed in 4 to 6 months

We started to develop a new testing generator, made of a PWM inverter having number of levels and slew rate that

can be modified, and voltage up to +- 10 kV. This does not exist anywhere in the market, and we have targeted 6

months to have the first prototype.

We are waiting for the delivery of the first prototype of a brand new PD detector that we developed with the

support of Dr. Riddhi Ghosh (who joined us already at CAPS and in the COMET team, thanks to a donation from

Prysmian). It can measure PD with any type of waveform (from DC to power electronics), reject noise, identify PD,

evaluate component health...automatically and without the need of experts. We will test extensively such

innovative instrument in CAPS in the next months, in the contest of the activity we are underlining here. It will be of

course available to interested participants

Reports:

"Insulation Design for Electrical Asset Component under Power Electronics Voltage Supply - Testing insulation tapes for motor wires and cable: results, material selection and design perspectives"

Contents:

• Showing how to plan and perform accelerated life tests to choose material candidates for rotating machine insulation to be used in electrification transportation, at voltage up to 1 kV, which can fit to the design requirements.

• Testing their short-term properties, namely breakdown strength and short-term life performance.

• Measure partial discharge inception voltage (PDIV) and repetitive partial discharge inception voltage (RPDIV) on suitable test objects.

• Provide a rough evaluation of design field, thus of project feasibility, considering statistics of failure and size effect.

• Elaborate on the steps to be considered to go from lab test results on specimens to full insulation design.