Almost 80% of today’s electricity is processed by power electronics, hence, they represent the backbone of several industry sectors. Within the green transition, power electronics play a pivotal role as they enable an efficient grid integration of renewable energy sources such as solar PV farms and wind turbines.

Power electronics are furthermore a key component in industrial drives and electric motors, consumer electronics such as laptops and home appliances, and last but not least e-mobility. Power electronics are fundamental to the operation and efficiency of electric vehicles, as they manage and convert electrical power from different sources to the appropriate forms required by various vehicle components.

Nevertheless, power electronics often operate under critical conditions with factors such as temperature, humidity, vibrations, and salinity affecting the performance of the components. The consequences of unreliable power electronics can be significant and lead to loss of revenue, reputation damage, and incompliance with safety regulations.

DESIGN-FOR-RELIABILITY MADE EASY

ReliaPE has designed a cloud-based software tool that helps engineers within various industry sectors to design more reliable power electronic systems, during the early stages of product development.

Due to a lack of commercially available software tools focusing on power electronics reliability, design engineers are otherwise often required to perform time-consuming experimental tests, and to determine the reliability based on field failure data and "rule-of-thumb" approximations. This leads to increased product development cost and longer time-to-market.

ReliaPE’s innovative software tool solves this issue, as it allows the user to quickly benchmark different technologies during early product development stages, and thus, facilitate the replacement of expensive and time-consuming prototype iterations, with digital design iterations. This can help reduce the time-to-market and development costs of new products.

PROVIDING A COMPETITIVE EDGE IN POWER ELECTRONICS

The core of the technology is the computational-efficient simulation models, the reliability-oriented AI algorithms, and the tool’s unique ability to investigate the system-level reliability of power electronic products based on the real-life environmental and operating conditions. Furthermore, the tool is able to provide realistic lifetime predictions, and enable the design for specific reliability requirements.

The software tool is applicable to a range of sectors:

• Renewable energy systems: Solar inverters, wind turbine controllers.
• Electric vehicles: Motor drives, battery management systems.
• Industrial drives: Variable frequency drives for motor control.
• Consumer electronics: Chargers, adapters, and power management in a range of devices.

More specifically, ReliaPE’s software tool will be able to provide large power electronic integrators a competitive edge by reducing power electronics reliability testing time by 30%, maintenance and return rates by up to 50%, and contribute to the reduction of the levelized cost of energy from renewable energy sources.

BASED ON MORE THAN 10 YEARS OF KNOWLEDGE

Founded in 2024, ReliaPE is a spin-out based on more than 10 years of reliability research at Aalborg University. The company is founded by Professor Frede Blaabjerg, Professor Huai Wang, and Assistant Professor Yi Zhang from AAU Energy, together with private investor Morten Lindblad.

The work leading to ReliaPE, started in the Grand Solutions project Advanced Power Electronic Technology & Tools (APETT), funded by Innovation Fund Denmark with Professor Frede Blaabjerg as principal investigator. Based on the project, two of the project partners, Grundfos and Danfoss, was granted licenses to the basic software for use internally.

Further, Grundfos supported the team and the AAU Technology Transfer Office on the path to continued development in the InnoExplorer project, where especially former Postdoc from AAU Energy, Ionut Vernica, supported by Huai Wang and Frede Blaabjerg, was instrumental in bringing the software to where it is today where Assistant Professor Yi Zhang joined the founding team.

Since the basic software functionality was developed in the APETT project, the AAU Technology Transfer Office has been a key part of the journey. First securing licenses to Grundfos and Danfoss, and the freedom to continue development and commercialization. Then working with the team to successfully apply for InnoExplorer, and continuously working with the team on commercialization, team formation, discussions with investors, all the way through to negotiating the license with the spin-out company ReliaPE ApS.