Participating Institutions: Purdue University and Iowa State University
Project Description This project involves a collaborative team that is developing a new power electronics curriculum. It is enhancing the relevance of the subject by identifying the role of power electronics in addressing tomorrow's grand challenge of developing sustainable energy resources. The effort is focusing on the increased demand for highly qualified personnel in the energy industry by creating a curriculum that helps entice and educate engineering students; addressing a severe workforce shortage in the power industry. There are three main objectives of the project: (1) to develop a new power electronics curriculum that educates the next generation of power engineers with the required knowledge and skills to tackle tomorrow's challenges; (2) to foster integration of research into the undergraduate curriculum and incorporate undergraduate students into research projects; and (3) to initiate a multi-faceted renewable energy, distributed generation, and electric vehicles curriculum. The effort is producing specifically tailored analytical/experimental tools to enhance active design/research-based learning practices by leveraging highly qualified personnel from two academic institutions with complementary expertise. The project's success in accomplishing these objectives is being assessed by an external evaluator.
Broader Significance The educational materials produced by this effort are being broadly disseminated via a mix of active and passive methods, through participation in conferences, journal publications and the Web (using Purdue's HUBzeroTM technology to create a 'Power Electronics Hub'). In addition, the developed lecture notes will provide the foundation for a new textbook on power electronics focused on renewable energy integration and electric vehicles applications. The new laboratory is being showcased to local high-school students, who are invited to attend exciting demonstrations of energy conversion projects. The proposed problem solving-based learning practices and engaging laboratory environment are helping to attract underrepresented groups into pursuing careers in the power systems industry.
The power engineering program at our institution was in need of a new educational approach for bringing timely topics such as renewable energy conversion and vehicle electrification concepts into the undergraduate classroom. In this respect, power electronics as a key enabling technology was identified as a course with high potential to make an impact. The goal of integrating these concepts into the undergraduate power engineering curriculum was achieved (i) by transforming our current electric machines and power electronics course syllabus to reflect the role of power electronics as a core enabling technology for renewable energy conversion and electrified transportation, and (ii) by creating innovative laboratory facilities for reinforcing the theoretical aspects taught in the classroom lectures. Transforming the current course syllabus was achieved by revising the course content and adding research-based sequential assignments and design projects. The students were involved in self-study, performing literature reviews, analyzing design considerations, and understanding control techniques of the power electronic circuits at a deeper level, and thereby gained an invaluable experience in analyzing and solving real-world problems slightly outside the context of the lectures but still in a safe learning-based environment. The developed laboratories consist of four identical power electronics stations as the one shown in the Figure. Each station accommodates two or three students, and consists of a computer for control and data capture/analysis, an oscilloscope for observing/capturing the waveforms, sensing equipment including current and voltage measurement probes, multi-meters, loads including DC and AC motors, batteries, a TI C2000 micro-controller board, passive components, semiconductor devices, and Printed Circuit Boards. Power-electronic circuits are designed and simulated in the MATLAB/Simulink environment with the ASMG toolbox.
