Around the beginning of this millennium, visionary leaders in power electronics from academia, industry and governments from around the world started to realize that provisioning of energy to humanity is going to be increasingly dependent on new pervasive technologies for electronic processing of electricity, and that the necessary innovations could only be achieved through global cooperation. That vision led to the formation of three major university-industry-government research partnerships: Center for Power Electronics Systems (CPES) in United states, Power Electronics Research Center (PERC) in Japan, and European Center for Power Electronics (ECPE) in Europe. These centers started information exchanges from the beginning, and have been developing different forms of continuing collaboration for over two decades now.
In 2015, a new Memorandum of Understanding was agreed between the New Generation of Power Electronics and System Research Consortium – Japan (NPERC-J; the successor to PERC), ECPE and CPES. It stipulated that the focal activity for the continuing open collaboration between the three organizations will be an annual meeting with two concentrations:
- Broad exchange about ongoing research activities in the 3 communities,
- Sharing and coordinating research and technology roadmaps.
After several informal gatherings and workshops, the first “Three Corners Power Electronics Extended Collaboration” (3C-PEEC) Workshop was held on January 28-29, 2020 in Tokyo, in conjunction with the 2nd New-generation Power Electronics Symposium (NPES), organized by NPERC-J.
Following the COVID-19-induced 2-year hiatus, the 2nd 3C-PEEC Workshop is being held on April 1-2, 2023 in Washington, DC, in conjunction with the CPES 2023 Annual Conference.