Developing WBG-Based, Extremely Low-Cost Laboratories for Power Electronics, Motor Drives, and Power System Protection and Relays for National Dissemination
Abstract
Developing WBG-Based, Extremely Low-Cost Laboratories for Power Electronics, MotorDrives, and Power Systems Protection and Relays for National DisseminationThe Navy~s mission requires that STEM undergraduates and graduate students be trained with first-rate education of power electronics and electric drives that play a central role in future electric ships, for example. The objective of this proposal is to design hardware laboratories where STEM students learn by gaining hands-on experience. The express purpose of this request is to design,build and then disseminate these new laboratory setups to all U.S. universities nationwide in their workforce development efforts to graduate large number of students with expertise in power electronics, electric drives, use of WBG devices, EMI/EMC and related fields. In addition to the redesign and modification of existing power electronics and motor-drive laboratories, two additional labs will be developed: 1) a power-electronics lab for high power applications, and 2) a Power System Protection, Relaying and Bus-transfer lab.The development proposed in this project and its implementation will be transformational with the possibility of all the U.S. universities teaching these subjects based on this material. These laboratories will result in engaged student learning and has the following merits:1. Newer wide bandgap (SiC and GaN) semiconductor devices will be utilized.2. New electric drives laboratory will cost nearly 1/4th the cost of the original and thus making it affordable by a large number of universities.3. Several more experiments will be added in the power electronics laboratory to include WBG-specific topics and EMI/EMC.4. In the electric-drives lab, experiments will be developed to include advanced topics such as vector control of drives.5. Experiments in both the laboratory will be digitally controlled, using the ONR-funded digital controller platform.6. The simulation platform at present only has the high-level simulation capability which will be extended to circuit-level simulation such as in power-electronic converters.7. A new power-electronics lab for high power applications will be developed.8. A new Power Systems Protection and Relaying lab will be developed.9. All board design files and the Bill of Materials will be made available free-of-cost. The laboratories developed in this project will be transformative in rejuvenating the courses in power electronics and electric machines and drives in all the universities. All the material developed in this project will be uploaded to our CUSP website that has 235 U.S. universities as members; it will be downloadable from the CUSP website.
Document Details
- Document Type
- DoD Grant Award
- Publication Date
- Dec 17, 2018
- Source ID
- N000141912018
Entities
People
- Ned Mohan
Organizations
- Office of Naval Research
- Regents of the University of Minnesota
- United States Navy