EPE Education Chapter (EPEEC)

Chapter Chair

Past Activities

EPE'07 in Aalborg: Power Electronics Education - Panel Discussion (Sept. 4, 2007)

Power Electronics is an enabling technology for all kinds of alternative energy utilization, sustainable mobility, high productivity manufacturing and energy efficiency. The highly dynamic developments in the field bring new challenges like interdisciplinary research, collaboration in international teams and international hiring. These could all benefit from insight into the power electronics curriculum and the required extensions to related domains like power systems, mechanical engineering, and material science. The introductory part of the workshop will provide an overview of the structuring of university level education in power electronics in the US, Europe, Japan, and China.

Teaching material on Power Electronics and Drives used at the University of Minnesota, will be presented, together with a related NSF sponsored activity on an Integrated Electric Energy Systems Curriculum. Furthermore, details on a first year student course on renewable energy at the NTNU will be discussed, along with the Problem-Based Teaching approach of Aalborg University, and the new release of the Interactive Power Electronics Seminar, iPES, which has been considerably extended in a collaboration of ETH Zurich and ECPE (European Center for Power Electronics). The ETH Zurich practical Space Elevator project, which is fascinating to undergraduates, will be shown, and the novel approach of EPFL in establishing a cross-departmental School of Engineering will be explained. Presentations giving details on the power electronics education and students interests in Japan and China will be further highlights. The discussion part of the Workshop aims to identify the industry needs and to identify topics like multi-domain modeling, packaging and reliability engineering that could be integrated into future power electronics education.

Panelists:

• H. Akagi, Tokyo Institute of Technology, Japan (Slides)
• F. Blaabjerg, Aalborg, Denmark (Slides)
• L. Lorenz, Infineon (Slides)
• J. Kolar, ETH Zurich, Switzerland (Slides)
• A. Rufer, EPF Lausanne, Switzerland
• T. Undeland, NTNU, Norway
• D. Xu, Zhejiang University, China (Slides)

• Andre Vandenput, TU Eindhoven, The Netherlands

• Johann W. Kolar
• Tore M. Undeland

A Highly Versatile Laboratory Setup for Teaching Basics of Power Electronics in Industry Related Form
This paper describes a laboratory setup for teaching basics of power electronics. The setup is a versatile power electronic system designed in an industry-related form, i.e. with a switching frequency of in the range of 20kHz, a low inductance double sided printed circuit board (PCB) layout, ..... You can find more information here.

Software for Circuit Simulation in Education

Numerical Circuit Simulation with CASPOC
Download the free Animation/Simulation program CASPOC for Power Electronics, Electrical Drives, Power Systems and mixed electrical/mechanical systems. The "Educational Example Packages" contain preprogrammed examples of Power Electronics and Electrical Drives. Online tutorial, samples and manual are also available.

PLECS - Piece-wise Linear Electrical Circuit Simulation for Simulink
PLECS is a unique tool for the fast and accurate simulation of controlled power electronics systems within the Simulink environment. Power semiconductors are modeled as ideal switches that change instantaneously between true short-circuit and open circuit. The use of ideal switches and the intuitive schematic editor make PLECS especially suited for power electronics courses. A student version with limited model size can be downloaded for free.

PSIM
PSIM is a simulation package specifically designed for power electronics and motor control. PSIM provides fast simulation and friendly user interface. The basic PSIM package consists of three programs: circuit schematic program, PSIM Simulator, and waveform display program SIMVIEW. In addition, there are three add-on modules for PSIM: Motor Drive Module for motor drives, Digital Control Module for discrete systems and digital control, and SimCoupler Module for co-simulation with Matlab/Simulink.

Mona & Lisa
Mona is a symbolic circuit analyzer. Lisa is a program for Control Systems and uses the concept of symbolic computation to the task of 'Bode/Root Locus/Time' analysis and design. A unique feature of Lisa is its capability to allow users to reshape plots graphically via draggable points and the program will automatically keep track of symbolic equations. Mona & Lisa are based on a Computer Algebra System (CAS) called 'Formulae 1'. As an example, one can use Formulae 1 to solve an integral and find out exactly how that integral was solved. All products were designed to run on Handheld devices such as PocketPC, Sharp Zaurus and SonyEricsson P800 but also on any PC running Windows, MacOS or Linux because they have been written in Java.

SEQUEL
SEQUEL is a general-purpose circuit simulation program developed at IIT Bombay and available for free download. Several examples in power electronics are available with the distribution. The examples are useful in teaching courses on Power Electronics. In particular, it would help in supplementing class-room teaching with simulation exercises in order to reinforce some of the concepts. A graphics interface is provided to make schematic entry and plotting of results easier for the user.

Teahlab
Digital circuits are the building blocks of digital electronics. If you look inside your cellular phone or your computer, the microchips you see are basically digital circuits. With a focus on the undergraduate student, this site teaches digital logic circuitry and the basics of microchip design. Here you will find the most comprehensive library of interactive microchips on the web, complete with full length step by step analysis of every circuit. In addition, we provide you an easy to use board where you can build and simulate your own circuits.

Problem-Based Teaching

Students build their own Switched Mode Power Supplies
Prof. van der Broeck describes the approach he is running at the FH Köln. He established labwork in "switched mode power supplies" for students as a supplement to the lecture. The aim of the labwork is to make power electronics more attractive to students, especially to those who originally preferred non power related subjects.

Organizations

EPE Home
The homepage of the European Power Electronics (EPE) Society.

IEEE Power Electronics Society
They provide some educational material for teaching and studying power electronics.

Related Material

Circuit Simulator Applet by Paul Falstad
The provided java applet is an electronic circuit simulator. When the applet starts up you will see a simple LRC circuit. The green color indicates positive voltage. The gray color indicates ground. A red color indicates negative voltage ....

Danish Wind Industry Association
Prof. Undeland provided a link to this webpage that contains a very impressive collection of material related to wind power. Besides Danish, translations into English, German, Spanish and French are available.

iCASS - Java Applets for Basic Electrical Engineering
This is an interactive course on basics of electrical engineering consisting of Java-applets. All content is currently in Japanese but the applets are still very useful to show basic principles. Translations into other languages will soon follow.

Primary Motor Types
Animations of electric machines, space vectors, and magnetic field distributions in motion by Prof. Mahmoud Riaz.

Three-Dimensional Animations of Power Electronics Circuits and Vizualize Voltage and Current
GIF-animations of electrical circuits and power electronics circuits are presented that use the third dimension to vizualize voltage. Furthermore, free MATLAB-tools are available to create one's own animations.

Power Electronics in the Mind of Finnish Children
The target of this competition organized by the Electrical Engineering Group SELA, Helsinki University of Technology, was to illustrate the work of an electrical engineer, not specifically power electronics. Altogether 231 pictures have been received while the webpage shows only few of them. The first four got a prize of 1000 Finnish mark (about 170 euro) and 5-12 500 Fmk (84 euro). By double clicking one will get a larger picture and also the name and city or village of the painter.

Interactive learning system for renewable energy sources ILSE
The interactive learning system for renewable energy sources ILSE provides basic knowledge on solar energy, wind energy topics and environmental aspects. It contains some online calculation tools for the technical and economical assessment of renewable energy systems. A download of the complete ILSE program is possible for local use.

Application and Integration Opportunities in Switched Mode Power Supplies
The paper describes different principles of switched mode power supplies by studying the power conversion stages of flat plasma display panels. It gives the student an impression how power electronics acts as a key element not only in the area of machines and high power but also in information technologies and low-power devices.

Books

MNPERE - Educational material
The webpage indroduces four books written by Prof. Ned Mohan on power electronics and electric drives.

"Elenergiteknik" (in Swedish!) by M. Alaküla, L. Gertmar, O. Samuelsson
The book is used for a course in "Electrical Energy Technology" in the 5th semester of the 10 semester long M.Sc. program in Electrical Engineering at Lund Institute of Technology. This is the first time the students study any electrical power related subject, and the goal is to give them an overview of the whole field from generation to consumption.

Last Change: July 31, 2009
© 2004 Drofenik, Kolar