Organisation - History

A special foundation – known as the EMVT Laboratory Foundation – was established in 2005 to realize and manage the new Flex Power Grid Lab. The Foundation is the result of a unique public-private partnership between KEMA, the Dutch energy research institute ECN and the technical universities of Eindhoven and Delft. This partnership is in part a spin-off of the successful governmental innovative power electronics research study program (IOP-EMVT). In this program over 25 promising students have undertaken doctoral research projects.

A fruitful cooperation between specialists of the partners in the Foundation and the Dutch companies Exendis and Eaton resulted in the design of the laboratory and the converter. The laboratory is now ready for service.

The laboratory will serve mainly as an innovative research facility. It will be the ideal test environment for grid operators, manufacturers, researchers and students and it will offer the opportunity to develop and perform state-of-the-art tests under controlled conditions. As such, the lab is aimed to be attractive to power electronics manufacturers active in a variety of different sectors, ranging from the energy (converters for distributed generation, wind turbines) and traction industries to the marine and shipbuilding industries and universities and research centres (intelligent substations, behaviour of DG units and fault current limiters).