EPO gives Rainer Marquardt lifetime achievement award for modular multilevel converter

The European Patent Office has named German engineer Rainer Marquardt the Lifetime Achievement recipient for the 2026 European Inventor Award. The honor recognizes the modular multilevel converter, a power-electronics breakthrough now used in grids, offshore wind and long-distance transmission. Why it matters: - The European Patent Office is recognizing a technology that helped make high-power electronic conversion practical at the gigawatt scale. - The modular multilevel converter is now a global standard for modern electricity grids, offshore wind integration and long-distance power transmission. - The award highlights a core piece of infrastructure behind the shift from fossil fuels to cleaner, more flexible electricity systems. What happened: - The European Patent Office named Rainer Marquardt the Lifetime Achievement recipient for the European Inventor Award 2026. - The EPO will honor Marquardt at a ceremony livestreamed from Berlin on 2 July 2026. - Winners in the Industry, Non-EPO Countries, Research and SMEs categories will also be announced at the event. The details: - Marquardt developed the Modular Multilevel Converter, or MMC, in 2001. - The EPO credits Marquardt’s inventions with opening the high-power range up to the gigawatt level for electronically controllable power conversion with high efficiency and reliability. - The MMC became the foundation for voltage-source-controlled high-voltage direct current transmission systems used worldwide. - The technology was designed to be freely scalable, transformer-free and not limited by power, voltage or functionality. - The MMC uses submodules as building blocks. - Its final interface uses only a fibre optic cable for communication and two electric power cables carrying low-frequency currents. - The submodules can be arranged freely in almost any geometric configuration. - The converter arms use series-connected submodules that switch independently. - The design produces a high-quality waveform and can tolerate single-submodule failures. - Distributed switching keeps the switching frequency per submodule very low. - The EPO says that is the main reason the MMC achieves efficiencies above 99%. - Marquardt studied electronic communication at the University of Hannover. - He later worked as a research assistant at the Institute of Power Electronics, graduated with honours and earned a doctorate in engineering. - He then joined Siemens AG in Erlangen, where he worked on advanced AC drives and power electronics. - In 2000, he became a full professor at the University of the Bundeswehr Munich and led the Institute of Power Electronics and Control. - He filed the first MMC patent in 2001. - He also consulted on and supported the first industrial applications for several years. - The Trans Bay Cable Project in California marked a major milestone for MMC technology. - The project installed a 400-megawatt direct current link undersea between Pittsburg and San Francisco. - The link enabled controllable power transfer while replacing a coal-fired power plant. - Later projects included the Nan’ao multiterminal network in China and the France-Spain INELFE interconnection. - The INELFE project added two gigawatts of controllable, bidirectional power transfer between France and Spain. - MMC technology is increasingly important for supporting fast-growing infrastructure, including data centres. Between the lines: - Marquardt’s work solved a practical problem that older converter designs could not handle well: combining very high power with reliability, functional safety and efficiency. - The award also reflects how power electronics has moved from niche engineering to a critical layer of the energy transition. - The technology’s broad adoption suggests the MMC has shifted from an academic concept to core grid infrastructure. What’s next: - The EPO will present the Lifetime Achievement distinction during the 2 July 2026 European Inventor Award ceremony in Berlin. - The award program will also name winners in the remaining 2026 categories at the same event. - More information about the inventor’s story and the impact of his work is available here .