Ned Mohan and William Robbins

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Educational Research at the University of
Minnesota Reforming the Electric Energy/Power
Curriculum.
Ned Mohan and William Robbins Dept. of Electrical
Computer Engineering March 19, 2005
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Motivation for Curriculum Reform
Declining enrollments and student interest in
electrical energy/power courses. Power
electronics Electric drives Power
systems Some of these courses being dropped at
many schools. Course topics essentially
unchanged in decades Increasing importance of
and opportuntities in these fields
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Basic Approach to Curriculum Reform

• Guiding mantra - Twice the number of topics
  with twice the in-depth knowledge compared to
  conventional courses in the field.
• Top-down sequencing of topics
• Design-oriented presentation of topics which
  focus on fundamentals
• Elimination of legacy topics
• Minimize repetitious and unrewarding
  calculations by use of simulation software
• Accompanying hardware laboratory where
  feasible. Single undergraduate course in each
  area.

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Revamped Course Offerings at U. of MN
One undergrad course per field. Relate all
fields to each other. Integration of research
and education.
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Power Electronics First Course

• Building-block approach using switching power
  pole.
• Shows the physical basis and commonality
  between most converter circuits.
• Allows feedback control to be discussed in
  the first course.

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PE Course Modules (40 Lectures)

• Applications Functionality Power-Pole Building
  Block(3)
• Power-Pole Practical Issues (4)
• DC-DC Converters and Design of Feedback
  Controller (7)
• Diode Rectifiers Power Factor Correction and
  Control (5)
• Isolated Switch-Mode Power Supplies Mag. Design
  (6)
• Soft-Switching, High Freq. AC CFL, Ind. Heating
  (4)
• DC AC Motor Drives, UPS (5)
• Thyristor Converters (3)
• Utility Applications of Power Electronics (3)

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Power Electronics Textbooks

• www.WILEY.com
• Translated into Chinese, Korean Greek

• www.MNPERE.com
• Thoroughly revised in 2005

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Power Electronics Laboratory
Circuit boards developed at U. of MN and
available commercially. Lab manual describing
experiments utilizing circuit board available
at www.ece.umn.edu/groups/power.
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Electric Drives First Course
Steady state analysis Space vector theory
used to describe electric machines New theory
to describe AC machines.
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Electric Drives 1st Course Topics ( 41 lect.)
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Electric Drives Advanced Course
Dynamic Analysis, Vector Control, Encoder-less
DTC
New way to look at d-q analysis as windings
rather than a mathematical transformation
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Electric Drives Laboratory
DSP-based laboratory Drives board and motor
set commercially available. Lab manual
describing experiments available at
www.ece.umn.edu /groups/power
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Electric Drives Textbooks
www.MNPERE.com
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Electric Power Systems First Course
Reforming of course currently underway.
Textbook being written by Ned
Mohan NSF-sponsored workhop on teaching of
power systems first course held in Orlando, FL
, Feb. 11-13, 2005.

• 125 Participants

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Pwr Syst. 1st Course Learning Objectives

• Overview of power systems changing landscape
• Sources of energy environmental consequences
• Fundamental principals in electric circuit theory
• Fundamental principals in magnetic theory
• Transformers
• Synchronous generators
• Transmission lines and cables - AC and HVDC
• Distribution System, Loads and Power Quality
• Calculation of power flow
• Rotor angle transient stability and voltage
  stability
• Fault currents, protection using relays and
  circuit breakers
• Over-voltages, surge arresters and insulation
  coordination
• Energy markets, open competition, deregulation

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Power Systems Instructional Laboratory

• Student version of commercial packages
• PowerWorld
• EMTDC
• MATLAB/Simulink
• Available code of a 3-bus Test case developed
  at the University of Minnesota in MATLAB/Simulink
• Power Flow
• Faults
• Stability
• Inter-area dynamic control AGC
• Relays for protection
• Overvoltage, insulation coordination
• Line design

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Introductory Course - Energy, Environment and
Society
Goal A university-wide course with enrollment
of 500-1,000 students/year Major
topics Qualitative physical understanding of
various energy generation schemes Fossil-fuel
based, hydro, nuclear, wind, hydrogen-powered
fuel cells, others Environmental impacts of
each scheme, some of them needing further
research Economics of each scheme and
full-cost accounting needing further research
Ancillary issues technical and economic
Transmission Storage Politics how
many of these decisions are made Ideal versus
reality Not in My Back Yard Policies to
encourage research and development Efficient
Energy Usage Conservation
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Does Curriculum Reform Work?
69 universities have agreed to collaborate in
developing NSF CCLI proposals for adapting our
laboratory developments.
Increasing student enrollments at U. of MN
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Dissemination Efforts
NSF-sponsored faculty workshops - 10 in the
past decade Internet-based short courses
Electric Drives, April 24-25, 2004, 850
registrants Power Electronics, Aug 18-25, 2004
1,600 registrants Power Systems Concept
Inventory, June 6-10, 2005 Presentations and
short courses at major conferences Reforming
the Electric Energy Curriculum, IPEC 2005,
Niigata, Japan April 4, 2005 Publications in
major archival journals Ned Mohan, William
Robbins, Paul Imbertson, Tore Undeland, Razvan
Panaitescu, Amit Kumar Jain, Philip Jose, and
Todd Begalke, "Restructuring of First Courses
in Power Electronics and Electric Drives That
Integrates Digital Control", IEEE Trans. on
Power Electronics, Vol. 18, No. 1, pp. 429-437,
Jan. 2003
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Ingredients Towards Success
Faculty Resolve Strong Research
Program Institutional Encouragement External
financial support NSF (DUE-9952704,
DUE-0231119) NASA (NAG3-2468) ONR
N00014-04-1-0791 Industrial cooperation Inexp
ensive commercial source for laboratory circuit
boards Reduced prices on software and hardware