Alexis Kwasinski with adviser Philip T. Krein A microgrid is an independently controlled portion of an electrical grid. It comprises its own power sources, energy storage devices, and loads and is usually interconnected with a larger grid. A microgrid can achieve improved local reliability and high efficiency relative to the complete power grid. It also […]
Hurricane Katrina Damage Assessment of Power Infrastructure for Distribution, Telecommunications and Back-up
Alexis Kwasinski and Wayne Weaver with Adviser Philip T. Krein On August 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrina struck the Mississippi and Louisiana coast with catastrophic consequences. Since then, news media have reported hurricane effects, including damage to the power grid and telecommunication network outages. Hurricane Katrina’s impact on power and communication networks and the consequences of […]
Gauss-Seidel Power-Flow Convergence with Negative Reactance Values
Rodney Yeu with his adviser Peter Sauer The conventional method of modeling two-winding tap-changing transformers and three-winding transformers may lead to negative leakage reactance values. This may cause instability of transient simulations as well as divergence of the steady-state power flow analysis. Specifically, negative reactance has been shown to cause divergence of the Gauss-Seidel power-flow […]
Power System Modal Extraction Via Variable Projection Algorithm
Shanshan Liu with adviser Peter W. Sauer Power system modal information is particularly valuable for power system analysis, control and prediction. But in many cases, the original power system is too complex or the parameters are not known with enough accuracy to produce adequate reduced-order models. Hence, it is desirable to extract the modal information […]
Mitigation of Power System Collapse through Active Dynamic Buffers
Wayne Weaver with adviser Philip Krein Modern power electronics can destabilize or even collapse a power system by acting as constant-power loads. These types of loads are becoming more prevalent at all power levels. Examples include advanced industrial motor drives, computer power supplies, compact fluorescent lighting, high-power supplies with active front ends, active filters for […]
Computer-Aided Averaged Modeling of dc-dc Converters
Ali Davoudi with adviser Patrick L. Chapman Average-value modeling of dc-dc converters is indispensable for small-signal frequency-domain characterization and/or for computationally efficient system-level time-domain transient studies. Conventional analytical averaged methodologies have been extensively investigated in the literature. However, it is very difficult to extract a unified averaged model that considers the effects of parasitics, is […]
Automated Model-Order Reduction of Rotary Magnetic Devices
Ali Davoudi with adviser Patrick L. Chapman This project is investigating order reduction of highly accurate physics-based models to ease computationally inefficient modeling of magnetic devices. In prior work, we have successfully implemented model-order reduction techniques of linear and nonlinear stationary magnetic devices. The next step extends the techniques to electric machines, which are much […]
Low-Order Nonlinear Dynamic Models Extracted from a Finite Eelement Method–Based State-Space Formulation for Magnetic Devices
Liyan Qu with adviser Patrick L. Chapman Finite-element (FE) based models for magnetic devices can be set up automatically, given the geometrical data and material information. However, time-domain, FE-based modeling is computationally expensive. This project deals with nonlinear model order reduction (MOR) methods for extracting low-order dynamic models of nonlinear magnetic devices from a high-order […]
Inverter Project
Under the leadership of Jonathan Kimball, a project team of six graduate students, plus several undergraduates who assisted in the construction and assembly of the finished units, designed a modular inverter. The complete system is composed of a power front-end (including a rectifier and boost converter), a four-phase inverter, and a DSPbased control module. The […]
2007 Solar Decathlon (year 1)
Trishan Esram with adviser Patrick L. Chapman The Solar Decathlon (Figure 17) consists of twenty teams of students, coming from national and international colleges and universities, competing to construct the most aesthetically appealing and energy-efficient home whose sole source of energy is solar. The team for the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign consists of our […]