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To develop a sustainable smart city, it is essential to increase building energy efficiency to reduce the impact on the environment. In recent years, building with DC micro-grid, i.e. DC buildings, has been getting a lot of attention as it has shown substantial improvements in energy efficiency compared with its AC counterpart.
The EL Division and MTR Academy co-organised the captioned webinar on 28 February 2022 to talk about the latest developments in, and show examples of, power conversion technology. Over 450 participants attended the webinar which was delivered by Dr River Li Tin Ho from the Hong Kong Applied Science and Technology Research Institute (ASTRI).
Dr Li is experienced in developing DC power technologies for smart city applications, and he discussed a variety of AC-DC power conversion solutions including active and passive solutions. He also talked about AC-DC power conversion solutions for DC building applications. Adopting these technologies can fully unleash the effectiveness of renewable energy resource and storage to supply the loads without loss on excessive DC-to-AC and/or AC-to-DC conversions.
However, electrical disconnections in DC voltage at substantial currents may lead to serious arcs which are highly unfavoured against classic circuit breakers. Dr Li introduced the latest technologies for DC power protection and furnished us with an actual example of a solid-state DC circuit breaker solution that has been developed and could complete a disconnection in the micro-second range without an electrical arc.
Dr Li also elaborated on AC-DC power conversion solutions with DC circuit breakers for building applications. It is believed that by adopting various power conversion technologies, we could maximise the effectiveness and efficiency of renewable energy resource and storage in the DC buildings in the pipeline.
The session wrapped up with a well-handled question-and-answer session.
The Professional Short Course 2022 was held by the EL Division online – due to the pandemic situation – in April 2022. Over 410 participants attended. The course consisted of four classes under the theme of “Smarter Design for our Electrified Living”.
Experienced engineers and industry practitioners from consultants, suppliers and utility companies were invited to give members the latest practical knowledge on different aspects of electrical systems which are being explored and are under active development in Hong Kong.
For Class 1, Mr Keith Wong, Head of Digital Business and Electrical Products, and Mr Raymond Wong, Senior Manager from Siemens Limited - Smart Infrastructure, were invited as co-speakers on the topic of “Powering the future with innovation and technologies”. During this class, new types of gas insulated switchgear (GIS) with environmentally friendly gas solutions were introduced, together with a holistic comparison with conventional GIS. In addition, the application and technology of arc fault detection devices (AFDD) in a dedicated final circuit for fire protection were presented along with demonstrations. Digital applications, commonly used to meet the rising demands of the industry, were also introduced.
For Class 2, we invited Ir Ben Lam, Director from Ove Arup & Partners Hong Kong Limited, Ir Ray Choi, Vice President from Schneider Electric (Hong Kong) Limited, and Mr Daniel Kwong, Solution Architect from Schneider Electric (Hong Kong) Limited, to be the co-speakers on the topic of a “Data centre (DC) design approach to meet ever-increasing demand”. The speakers shared their design experiences in various DC projects in achieving an effective and efficient way to monitor and manage energy consumption to optimise equipment performance while improving system reliability. Different Medium Voltage (MV) electrical distribution schemes and Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS) solutions commonly adopted in recent DC were also introduced.
Both classes were well received by our members. These online classes together with the online quiz, as well as the interactive question-and-answer session, were particularly welcomed by the participants. Professional Short Course 2022 – Classes 3 and 4 will be reported in the next issue of this Journal.