Last 2nd to 4th October, the “18th International Conference on Renewable Energies and Power Quality” was held in Granada, Spain. The conference, initially scheduled from 1st to 3rd April 2020 had to be postponed due to the rapid development of the Covid-19 worldwide.

This conference is a meeting point for specialists engaged in the fields of renewable energies and power quality. Other related topics such as electric vehicles, electrical machines and drives, power electronics, control strategies, and monitoring and diagnostics are also covered in the conference program.

Fernando Nuño, Energy and Climate Portfolio manager at European Copper Institute (ECI) represented ReFreeDrive project at the conference in a Plenary Session. The availability of copper considering the expected growth of the EVs market in the upcoming years was explained and put in perspective with other raw materials such as rare earth elements. Besides, the main results of ReFreeDrive project so far and a comparison with commercially available permanent magnet benchmark motors was presented.

This project has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 770143