Development of a State-of-the-Art Undergraduate Laboratory for Power Electronics Education

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Engineering - Electrical (55)The project is developing a modern hardware laboratory that supports a tightly coupled introductory course in power electronics and a senior design project emphasis in this area. It is adapting a highly successful pedagogical approach and model laboratory developed at a leading program in this field at the University of Minnesota. The approach uses a building-block model to uniformly analyze all commonly used converter topologies, thereby allowing coverage of even advanced topics in the introductory course. The PI is modifying the model program by adding a special emphasis on the design aspects of power electronics, an introduction to digital control, and new experiments on the emerging field of power management. The evaluation effort is using student surveys, visits by local employers, and employer surveys to assess the effect of the approach on improving student learning, on attracting students to the field, and in providing skilled graduates in this field. Dissemination is being accomplished through participation in a widely attended, national workshop program on power electronics educations and through the seminar program of a power systems consortium with 13 university and 40 industry members.