PECI 2020 is the longest-running student conference and its success is honored by IEEE Industry Application Society (IAS) Tomy Sebastian, the immediate IAS past president, and being copied by at least three other institutions. This has inspired us to consider new possibilities for PECI 2021. One hundred twenty-three attendees from 25 universities, 12 companies and […]
Illini Solar Car
Illini Solar Car is a team of multidisciplinary students who designs and builds solar cars to race in cross-country solar races like the World Solar Challenge and the American Solar Challenge. The cross-country races allow students to apply their technical knowledge to build a road-worthy car, and provide opportunities for them to learn soft skills […]
Illinois Solar Decathlon Build Team 2019-2020
The University of Illinois Solar Decathlon team (ISD) is designing an energy-efficient sustainable house adaptable to user requirements. The modular homes can be attached and detached to units, and include multifunctional furniture. These capabilities allow the inhabitant to design their home based on their need while allowing for both upscaling and downscaling. Secondly, this house […]
Solar Car
Professor Banerjee has recently started offering a new course entitled Solar Car. The course objective is to show students early in their curriculum that a multidisciplinary understanding is essential to create a complex system. UIUC’s own Solar Car “Argo” is taken as an example. The course covers higBlah Blah Blah erations side of running a […]
A Self-Triggered Secondary Frequency Control Scheme in AC Microgrids
Siddhartha Nigam with advisers P. Sauer and A. Domínguez-García We present a self-triggered control scheme for achieving secondary frequency control in ac microgrids. Over the last few years, the microgrid concept has been shown to be a promising approach to enable the efficient integration and management of distributed energy resources (DERs). Frequency control is a […]
An Industrial-Grade Control Node Prototype for Distribution Network Applications
Olaoluwapo Ajala with adviser A. Domínguez-García During the last decade, we have developed numerous control algorithms for distribution network applications that rely on a distributed decision-making approach wherein control decisions pertaining to individual assets in the microgrid are based on information acquired locally and other information obtained by exchanges with other nearby assets. Through these […]
Dual-Active Bridge Flying Capacitor Multi-Level Converter for Data Center Applications
Wentao Jiang with adviser A. Stillwell A conventional dual-active bridge converter consists of full bridges on the input and outside, separated by a transformer. The two full bridges have the same duty cycle, but the phases of the two full bridges have an offset. Because of this phase shift, the power flow of a dual-active […]
Condition-Based Maintenance Algorithms for Power Converters Using Wide-Bandgap Devices
Patrick Wang with adviser A. Banerjee This research project focuses on the prediction of MOSFET failures of silicon-based power electronics building blocks and is a collaboration with Dr. John Donnal at the United States Naval Academy. The research can be broken down to two major parts: Design and construction of a SiC-based resonant power converter […]
Integration of End-winding Cooling and In-Slot Winding Cooling for High Power Density Electric Machines
CEME Collaborator Julia Zhang with Research Assistant Yanyan Xie at The Ohio State University This project is jointly funded by the Grainger Center for Electric Machinery and Electromechanics and the Ford Motor Company. The objective is to study how to integrate end-winding and in-slot cooling and analyze the thermal performance improvement compared to a baseline […]
Real-Time Health Monitoring of IGBT Modules
Qichen Jin with adviser A. Banerjee Insulated-gate bipolar transistors (IGBTs), widely used as power transistors because of their high-voltage rating. can be used in electrifying transportation including cars, trains and airplanes. By estimating the lifetime of IGBT modules, we can replace them before critical failures occur for these crucial applications. Vce during the IGBT turn-on […]