H-Bridges team from Belgrade University wins second place in IFEC 2023 competition

The H-Bridges team of students from the School of Electrical Engineering at the University of Belgrade won second place and the Outstanding Performance Award at the world’s largest university competition in the field of innovative and energy-efficient solutions – IEEE International Future Energy Challenge (IFEC) 2023.

The contest was organized by the global Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers – IEEE. The H- Bridges team traditionally ranks high.

The topic of IFEC 2023, was the development of a high-efficient and single-phase solid-state transformer or SST, and Serbian students have been working on for several months. The goal was also to develop a prototype, hardware and software for the integration of power electronic devices.

The solution enables using less heavy materials such as iron and copper, while simultaneously providing system diagnostics in real time, H-Bridges said.

The implementation of the concept would accelerate the introduction of innovative solutions in the traditional electricity system and ease the integration of renewable energy sources.

“With the final prototype, our students achieved an efficiency of 94.1% at 1,000 W, as well as 10 times less weight compared to market solutions”, H-Bridges pointed out.

The finals were held from July 25 to 28 at the Leibniz University Hannover in Germany. Here’s the ranking in the final round of the competition:

1. Reutlingen University, Germany
2. University of Belgrade – ETF, Serbia
3. University of Connecticut (UConn), United States
4. Utah State University (USU), US
5. Indian Institute of Technology Bombay (IIT Bombay) and Sardar Patel Institute of Technology (SPIT), India
6. TH Köln – University of Applied Sciences, Germany
7. Hasselt University (UHasselt), Belgium

H-Bridges won The Best Innovative Design Award last year and came in second overall as well. It won the competition in 2005 and 2019.