Fifth Consortium Meeting of Neohire

The NEOHIRE Project continues its journey.  A new meeting was held to monitor the status of the project at University of Birmingham (UOB) premises in Birmingham (UK) last 22nd and 23rd October 2019.

NEOHIRE aims to reduce the dependence on scarce magnet materials for the manufacture of electric motors and generators. As part of Cidaut’s contribution to the project, the status of the Work Package 3 was presented, which is related to the design, modeling and simulation of a novel full-scale wind turbine generator using the magnets developed in the project. For more information on NEOHIRE, please visit http://neohire.eu/

ReFreeDrive Consortium meets at Coiltech 2019

Coiltech hosts the World Magnetic Conference, chaired by Prof. Marco Villani (University of L’Aquila one of the partner of ReFreeDrive project), the biggest conference in its field. WMC offers both visitors and exhibitors and excellent opportunity to update one’s knowledge about innovation of materials, methods and technologies for further improvement of efficiency in production, distribution, transformation and consumption of electrical energy.

ReFreeDrive’s partners had an excellent experience last year at Coiltech 2018. For this reason, they have met again at Coiltech 2019. During the Conference the partners presented the most relevant technical results of the project that is starting its third and last year. The session, specially dedicated to the ReFreeDrive project, started with the general overview of the project presented by Cidaut as Coordinator. After the introduction, Jaguar Land Rover, Motor Design Limited, IFPEN, L´Aquila University, Breuckman and European Copper Institute explained some of the technical details of the project.

ReFreeDrive has been funded by the European Commission in the H2020 Frame Programme and it aims to avoid the use of rare earth magnet through the development of a next generation of electric drive trains, ensuring the industrial feasibility for mass production while focusing on the low cost of the manufacturing technologies.

ReFreeDrive Midterm review meeting

ReFreeDrive project reached half of its length last March. This means it was time to hold the Midterm review meeting. To this end, all project members and the Project Officer met last 22nd and 23rd of May in Brussels, at Aurubis facilities.

During the meeting, the main achievements of the project were noted, and the results of the different tasks carried out by each consortium member were discussed. At this point, the motor design stage is finished, so the results obtained give an accurate idea about what can be expected from the final prototypes. Fortunately, all projects KPIs and milestones are being successfully accomplished; hence our expectations remain the highest for the second half of the project.

In the following months the optimized motor designs for both configurations (induction and synchronous reluctance) and power levels (200kW and 75kW) will be manufactured and tested.

ReFreeDrive project reaches 18 months

Last March ReFreeDrive project, coordinated by CIDAUT, reached the half of its length. The ReFreeDrive project is focused on contributing to avoid the use of rare earth magnets through the development of a next generation of electric drivetrains, ensuring the industrial feasibility for mass production while focusing on the low cost of the manufacturing technologies.

ReFreeDrive project is expected to achieve an incremental reduction in total motor and power electronics system costs through optimised design for manufacture, increasing the performance of both electric motors and power electronics. Specifically, ReFreeDrive project aims at achieving a motor torque increase of 30% while halving motor losses, increasing power density in power electronics by 50% and reducing production costs around 15% against similar solutions (Reference: Tesla Model S60).

On the occasion of the 18 months since the beginning of the project, its partners met on 20th and 21st March at Brussels for a new General Assembly meeting. During the meeting, the tasks carried out by the partners during the last six months were reviewed, and the status of the different Work Packages was analysed in order to define actions for the second half of the project, when the 8 e-Drives (200kW and 75kW) will be manufactured and tested.

Also on these days CIDAUT attended the joint GV04 dissemination event, which took place in Brussels, too. The workshop presented the innovations that are currently being developed by three EU-funded projects under the European Green Vehicles Initiative (EGVI): ModulED, ReFreeDrive and DRIVEMODE. This event allowed exploring synergies between the three projects in order to maximize the outcome of the innovations under development within each one of them.

More than 100 people showed interest in the event and around 75 of them attended the workshop (36 people belong to the project consortia, while 68 people are external audience), many of them belonging to leading edge organizations in the field of electric drivetrain design and innovation.

NEOHIRE project holds its fourth Consortium Meeting

Last April, the NEOHIRE Consortium, formed by 10 partners, met at KOLEKTOR premises in Essen (Germany) to analyze the evolution of the project. Members of the Advisory Board and the Technical Monitor also were present at this meeting. The progress made so far in the project was presented to them and they gave their recommendations to continue the lines of research initiated.

NEOHIRE aims to reduce the dependence on magnet material for the manufacture of electric motors and generators. In this scenario Cidaut presented the status of the Work Package 3 of the project, which is related to the design, modeling and simulation of a novel full-scale wind turbine generator using the magnets developed in the project.

For more information on NEOHIRE, please visit http://neohire.eu/