Teaching Sustainable Energy and Power Electronics to Engineering Students in a Laboratory Environment Using Industry-Standard Tools

Power electronics and renewable energy are two important topics for today's power engineering students. In many cases, the two topics are inextricably intertwined. As the renewable energy sector grows, the need for engineers qualified to design such systems grows as well. In order to train such...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inIEEE transactions on education Vol. 58; no. 3; pp. 173 - 178
Main Authors Ochs, David S., Miller, Ruth Douglas
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published IEEE 01.08.2015
Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc
Subjects
ac/dc power converters
College Students
converters
dc/dc power converters
electrical engineering education
Electronic Equipment
Electronics
Energy
Energy Conservation
Engineering Education
Experiments
Inverters
Laboratories
Magnets
Maximum power point trackers
Natural Resources
Pretests Posttests
Program Effectiveness
Renewable energy sources
Software packages
Sustainability
Wind turbines
Kansas
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Summary:Power electronics and renewable energy are two important topics for today's power engineering students. In many cases, the two topics are inextricably intertwined. As the renewable energy sector grows, the need for engineers qualified to design such systems grows as well. In order to train such engineers, new courses are needed that highlight the unique engineering challenges presented by renewable energy systems. This paper presents the theory, implementation, and assessment of a new laboratory course designed to teach power electronics and renewable energy to engineering students. A key element of the course is the use of real renewable energy systems in the laboratory setting. Students design, test, and troubleshoot power electronic circuits (such as dc/dc converters and pulse-width-modulated inverters) with tools used widely in industry (such as MATLAB/Simulink and dSPACE digital signal processors). Ten unique experiments are presented, as well as detailed descriptions of two open-ended design projects: a maximum power point tracker for a photovoltaic array and a full converter for a permanent-magnet wind turbine. Results from students' work on the experiments and final projects, as well as an assessment of the effectiveness of the course based on pre- and post-testing, are also presented.
ISSN:0018-9359
1557-9638
DOI:10.1109/TE.2014.2348539