WEBVTT 00:00.000 --> 00:09.320 Hello everybody, thank you very much for welcoming us again. 00:09.320 --> 00:15.640 It's our third time we come here at the Energy Devroom, we're happy to be here again. 00:15.640 --> 00:25.080 I am Luis Villa and I'm Jolini and we both are part of the Antec team. 00:25.080 --> 00:31.480 The Dontec is a foundation and I start up dedicated to open source power electronics 00:31.480 --> 00:39.280 hardware, so the magic boxes that we use to either drive motors or send energy into the 00:39.280 --> 00:40.280 grid. 00:40.280 --> 00:44.920 Our mission is to give people the tools that they need to act for the energy transition. 00:44.920 --> 00:47.360 Of course, we don't did this only the choice. 00:47.360 --> 00:53.760 We also have a Clément Fouche who works a lot on helping us with the core development. 00:53.760 --> 01:01.800 And from the past few months, we have Andreas Siebe, who is a social professor in 01:01.800 --> 01:08.160 Argentina who has been helping us a lot with the power hardware design as well. 01:08.160 --> 01:09.400 So what is Dontec? 01:09.400 --> 01:18.400 The idea of Dontec is to provide people with a send-box system through which we can develop 01:18.400 --> 01:22.480 hardware or software for power and energy. 01:22.480 --> 01:28.160 So it can integrate academia, industry, and makers into this single technology sandbox 01:28.160 --> 01:33.080 and allow for new ideas and new talents to eventually come out. 01:33.080 --> 01:36.560 That's all, that's all we hope for. 01:36.560 --> 01:42.440 We have so far developed three products, two of which are in the market already, the twist 01:42.440 --> 01:44.240 and the onverter shields. 01:44.240 --> 01:48.960 So these are shields for the microcontroller, which is the little board that you see in 01:49.000 --> 01:52.720 each one of our standard boards. 01:52.720 --> 01:57.800 We've commercializing them, they are in a few universities in France and in Europe now 01:57.800 --> 01:59.640 in Argentina as well. 01:59.640 --> 02:03.840 The idea is that we have modules which can be connected in parallel and we can raise power. 02:03.840 --> 02:07.760 That's what you see on our standalone and rack mounts. 02:07.760 --> 02:13.200 Dontverter is for drive-in motors up to kilowatt and the powerverter is the onverter version 02:13.200 --> 02:18.000 for few kilowatt's, six or more. 02:18.000 --> 02:22.680 There's a design is coming out, it's going to come out this year and it's a total modular 02:22.680 --> 02:29.520 design which means we assemble these modules to create the onverter, the powerverter. 02:29.520 --> 02:36.240 At each time we have the same controller which means that we have the same software stack 02:36.240 --> 02:42.240 that drives all of these systems. 02:42.240 --> 02:46.600 So this software stack is quite specific to power electronics because it requires 02:46.600 --> 02:52.640 a hard-wheel-time scheduling and specific features and functions and we build that ecosystem 02:52.640 --> 02:57.720 and this framework on top of the VR Artors, which is one of the biggest Linux foundation 02:57.720 --> 03:03.960 project that is very popular and we've written some specific drivers for that power 03:03.960 --> 03:05.200 ecosystem. 03:05.200 --> 03:11.360 So we are basically able to tackle from the silicon and the power electronics use case. 03:11.360 --> 03:17.080 They arrive from these drivers and these APIs and on top of that we build some graphical 03:17.080 --> 03:22.000 interface that we call modular, what is that enables you to plot through graphical interface 03:22.000 --> 03:25.080 and kind of plots and data and so on. 03:25.080 --> 03:30.920 Here we are not really aiming at IoT features and so on but mostly on how you tackle 03:30.920 --> 03:37.280 down from the silicon up to the power topologies that will be useful for your use case 03:37.280 --> 03:38.920 and application. 03:38.920 --> 03:44.880 So we have two things, a graphical interface as I mentioned, but also an idea, IDE sorry 03:44.880 --> 03:52.400 that enables you to get going and get started quite easily and so this is what is under 03:52.400 --> 03:56.920 the hood, software always. 03:56.920 --> 04:04.120 So as we mentioned so far we are a small startup and a foundation in other CNRS ages which 04:04.160 --> 04:09.080 is the national research and so on and so on and so on and so on and so on and so on. 04:09.080 --> 04:14.280 And we are aiming at having also a direct impact more direct impact because so far we 04:14.280 --> 04:21.240 are re-advanced in academia and together with universities and so on so we spread this 04:21.240 --> 04:25.560 knowledge and it is now how it is really critical to the energy transition but the goal 04:25.560 --> 04:33.080 is also to have a more direct impact on key topics on the slightly as immobility for instance 04:33.160 --> 04:40.360 or energy access or energy independence which are quite close by in the end but tackle 04:40.360 --> 04:46.840 different zones in the world basically and also today is about energy access and energy 04:46.840 --> 04:48.200 independence. 04:48.200 --> 04:53.960 We believe that in order to have a such a direct impact and propose something that everyone 04:53.960 --> 05:00.040 can bring in his home, a solar micro inverter would be really cool to have open source 05:00.200 --> 05:05.640 so everyone could develop and be part of this openness movement around the energy access and 05:05.640 --> 05:12.040 energy independence because it is at the individual scale so everyone can get going, test, 05:12.040 --> 05:20.440 put it in his garden, in his roof, in his balcony and yeah it's really, it really 05:21.000 --> 05:27.240 permits to cross this boundary between north and south and countries where we have like different 05:27.320 --> 05:34.280 problems but maybe we can centralize some good design procedures and try to cross the borders 05:34.280 --> 05:43.400 through this knowledge and how. So yeah the purpose and manifesto is united with them to make 05:43.400 --> 05:50.840 inverters no longer black boxes so we are as I mentioned as I mentioned impact driven and we 05:50.840 --> 05:56.760 aim at tackling this challenge together as a community and the idea is that maybe together we can 05:56.760 --> 06:04.200 manage to decentralize both the design and maybe the manufacturing down the line okay and why it's 06:04.200 --> 06:11.320 important it's because it permits to redeem sovereignty on key knowledge and know how and also on 06:11.320 --> 06:18.760 data because so far we are stuck with critical pieces of infrastructure maybe we have a 06:18.760 --> 06:24.200 data logger in the house that is taking our consumption or production and it's sending it to a 06:24.280 --> 06:33.080 foreign cloud okay and so from this manifesto we derived some really early specs 06:34.200 --> 06:41.080 so basically I won't go through the table in detail but the idea is to get a small micro inverted 06:41.080 --> 06:50.920 for two small solar panels or one big solar panel which stands for 450 VA so yeah quite a small 06:51.880 --> 07:01.240 production but something that is that everyone can handle at home so this is one of the early 07:01.240 --> 07:07.640 hardware rendering the prototypes are in the production now so we don't have them to to put them today 07:07.640 --> 07:16.360 but hopefully in few weeks we will be loving a preliminary test results and and I would like to assess 07:17.080 --> 07:25.320 the challenges that goes with creating such open source micro inverters I mean it's power so 07:25.320 --> 07:33.320 it it has some risks involved and it has some strong compliance to be ensured and to be granted 07:33.320 --> 07:38.280 to these kind of things because interact with the grid they have high voltage they have fire risks 07:38.280 --> 07:45.080 as well and so there is this high constraints and compliance so we will have to go as a company 07:45.080 --> 07:51.720 freeze this compliance testing in order to have these projects tested and and compliance and 07:51.720 --> 07:58.920 safe for the end users so this is one one of the key challenges associated with that and also 07:58.920 --> 08:05.000 robustness because it's really hard from a design perspective to be able to save the design 08:05.000 --> 08:10.920 and the hardware will deploy in the field will be resilient in ten years from now okay but the 08:10.920 --> 08:17.480 thing is what we believe is if we tackle these challenges as a community and not as a single company 08:18.120 --> 08:24.440 we can make it beneficial ecosystem for everyone and also having this shared technical comments 08:26.200 --> 08:31.960 can end up in like really community-based projects that are not known as micro inverters but maybe 08:31.960 --> 08:36.920 bigger inverters or other products that are really important for the energy transition 08:41.160 --> 08:47.560 so just to give a quick detail so on the right those are the challenges and hardware they're very 08:47.560 --> 08:55.480 similar challenges to the firmware as well on the right we've drawn what is the topology of the 08:55.480 --> 09:01.160 system so the system that you see on the left you see the little microcontroller on the left 09:01.160 --> 09:07.880 bit below the cables there I put the we put the microcontroller here on the top as well so all this 09:07.880 --> 09:13.640 control which are the blue box and the red one they have to fit into the microcontroller and 09:13.640 --> 09:19.480 basically what's happening here is that the control part the software will have to handle the pd so 09:19.480 --> 09:27.400 does put the pd into maximum production raise this voltage to 400 volts and from those 400 volts 09:27.400 --> 09:33.800 invert it synchronize with the grid and inject into the grid so far what we have done is that we have 09:33.800 --> 09:39.640 the blue boxes the blue boxes are stuff that we have already done either through the previous 09:40.840 --> 09:48.280 boxes sorry converters we had the opportunity to build those that called in part of the code that we 09:48.280 --> 09:53.320 don't have like the grid compliance are stuff that we're working on and obviously we will work on together 09:57.240 --> 10:03.240 so everyone is very welcome to choose this first blocks of ecosystem that we're trying to 10:03.240 --> 10:10.440 build together I would like to reiterate many things to all the underlying ecosystem open source 10:10.440 --> 10:16.120 ecosystem that permits this kind of project to exist namely Ticad which is one of the most brilliant 10:16.120 --> 10:23.480 open source program I know of because I'm a huge user of that but also many of the projects that 10:23.480 --> 10:29.560 are less known like Libosola that developed many power converters for the solar industry but also 10:29.560 --> 10:37.720 some nice IoT ecosystem that we are using and the in-axis foundation that will we will collaborate 10:37.720 --> 10:45.400 with to try to manufacture this prototypes in Kenya so we are trying from the start to see how we can 10:45.400 --> 10:54.360 decentralize manufacturing so we have different ways of procuring this this inverter I won't go into the 10:54.360 --> 11:00.840 details but we have also a community documentation center a GitHub that is all by the foundation 11:02.120 --> 11:08.920 forum and a discord server and I would like to take the opportunity in one minute to show you 11:08.920 --> 11:15.240 what is inside and behind this QR code so you can take a look and eventually if you leave a star 11:15.240 --> 11:25.800 who will be more than happy uh tech I will switch screen and manage really quickly so this is 11:25.800 --> 11:36.200 guy card yeah so what is an inverter an inverter is both a schematic and a layout 11:37.000 --> 11:50.600 will quickly go through this schematic if I manage yeah yeah please and then maybe you can show the 11:50.600 --> 11:57.400 3D model life so everyone can show and and maybe in between if you have any question so we have 11:58.520 --> 12:07.160 the demo running yeah okay so this is what you can download from now and of course you are very 12:07.160 --> 12:13.480 welcome if you have issues or improvement so there is a small contribute dot mdfi where everyone can 12:13.480 --> 12:21.000 tackle the challenge if they feel so or if you will know some people that are in this vibe of a 12:21.000 --> 12:40.040 point source and our family always power electronics yes so they tend to have yeah so the question is why 12:40.040 --> 12:47.080 don't we use the electronic capacitors and what we replace them with actually we replace them with 12:47.080 --> 12:56.520 a big box the grey box there that are film capacitors that have better lifespan yes 13:10.920 --> 13:17.720 so the question is about the limits of the license so the project is license and the 13:17.720 --> 13:25.560 the sound open out to our license strongly reciprocant so this license is meant to provide you 13:25.560 --> 13:32.520 also right from an open source license so to study to modify to sell so you have also to share 13:32.520 --> 13:47.800 to sell so if you make modification you have to share them back so the question is when the 13:47.800 --> 13:54.600 project will be available in market well at the moment it's prototyping phase so we will have to 13:54.600 --> 14:00.440 go for the compliance testing and so on so there is some risk involved in that process but I think 14:00.440 --> 14:06.760 in one year for now we might have the first results and we try to go for a crowd supply project so 14:06.760 --> 14:13.480 it's a platform where you can distribute open source hardware projects so it's quite specific but 14:13.480 --> 14:23.080 it's a crowdfunding platform basically do you see your open batteries on this like go to the grid 14:23.720 --> 14:32.680 so the question is about how we can integrate batteries with that kind of products 14:34.040 --> 14:39.720 so regular micro inverters does not cover the problematic of adding batteries micro inverters are 14:39.720 --> 14:45.240 located physically close to the solar panel so maybe on the rooftop or in the garden in the balcony 14:45.240 --> 14:51.080 whereas usually battery inverters are in a small cabinet or okay so it's a different 14:51.080 --> 14:57.960 product but we took that into the design consideration so we can extend in the future 14:57.960 --> 15:03.240 can slightly change the topology and be able to integrate batteries that's an 15:03.240 --> 15:09.800 step but big part of the job is making it a grid compliance and having a technical comment that 15:09.800 --> 15:15.160 it take that challenge once we have that it will be easier for everyone to deploy a 15:15.160 --> 15:22.760 product in the market either with batteries or with them yes 15:22.760 --> 15:29.320 is this design intended to only be reconnected or I'm just thinking if you're 15:29.320 --> 15:35.240 you're targeting the staff which may have grid reliability issues 15:35.240 --> 15:50.440 so the question is about is it meant to be only grid connected or it could be potentially 15:50.440 --> 15:57.480 doing grid for me so yeah this is something that is inside the firmware so you can change the 15:57.480 --> 16:03.000 behavior of the inverter the problem there is that as there is no storage you cannot 16:03.080 --> 16:09.640 operate it fully in grid for me because as soon as there is a lack of sun you won't have yeah 16:09.640 --> 16:15.560 you won't have energy anymore but yeah you can tune the algorithm to make it partly grid for me 16:18.680 --> 16:22.680 thank you guys