Making the most of electric power

Wednesday, February 14, 2001

While brownouts in California are making that state's residents painfully aware of the need to use electric power wisely, Ecostar, a new joint venture owned by Ford, Daimler-Chrysler, and Ballard Power Systems, is providing a much-needed boost to power conversion and control electronics. They are adapting technology developed for the automotive industry to a variety of industrial applications from 75 to 350 kW.

Fred Flett, Ecostar's vice-president of engineering, explains that the company's new stationary power conversion electronics began in electric vehicles. "Due to our automotive experience, we are very fortunate to have been involved in developing efficient power-conversion electronics," says Flett. "Our advanced control architectures and hardware-in-the-loop development tools allow development of control strategies-for example, alternative pulse-width-modulation techniques--while being connected to the grid," he says.

Applications for the new power conversion and control system include microturbines, fuel cells, and other portable or stationary power generation systems. Usage modes for the Ecostar power-conversion system include peak shaving, load following, base load, and grid blackout auto start. Operating modes include grid parallel operation, stand-alone power generation, auto transfer from grid parallel to stand-alone, and multi-unit connects.

For more information, contact Dwight Hansell, Ecostar, 15001 Commerce Dr. North, Dearborn, MI 48120; Tel: (313) 248-1496; Fax: (313) 845-5349.