Electrical and Electronics Commons^™

Portable Nano-Hydro Power Generator For The Dc House Project, Andrew Aw, James Biggs

Electrical Engineering

This senior project report explains the construction and design of a small, portable water generator that converts kinetic energy flowing in small creeks to electrical energy as a renewable source of energy for the DC House. The DC House, in short, is a project to build a self-sustainable house for Third World countries that utilizes only DC electricity. The system consists of two converters and a charge controller for a 12V lead-acid battery. The first converter converts the hydro generator voltage output to 15 Volts for safe and proper charging of the lead-acid battery by the charge controller. The second …

Fea Estimation And Experimental Validation Of Solid Rotor And Magnet Eddy Current Loss In Single-Sided Axial Flux Permanent Magnet Machines, Xu Yang

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

The rotor and magnet loss in single-sided axial ux permanent magnet (AFPM) machines with non-overlapped windings is studied in this dissertation. Finite element analysis (FEA) estimations of the loss are carried out using both 2D and 3D modeling. The rotor and magnet losses are determined separately for stator slot passing and MMF space harmonics from currents in the stator. The segregation of loss between the solid rotor plate and the magnet is addressed. The eddy current loss reduction by magnet segmentation is discussed as well. Two prototype 24 slot/22 pole single-sided AFPMs, fabricated with both single layer (SL) and double …

Understanding Vehicular Traffic Behavior From Video: A Survey Of Unsupervised Approaches, Brendan Tran Morris, Mohan Manubhai Trivedi

Electrical & Computer Engineering Faculty Research

Recent emerging trends for automatic behavior analysis and understanding from infrastructure video are reviewed. Research has shifted from high-resolution estimation of vehicle state and instead, pushed machine learning approaches to extract meaningful patterns in aggregates in an unsupervised fashion. These patterns represent priors on observable motion, which can be utilized to describe a scene, answer behavior questions such as where is a vehicle going, how many vehicles are performing the same action, and to detect an abnormal event. The review focuses on two main methods for scene description, trajectory clustering and topic modeling. Example applications that utilize the behavioral modeling …

Photovoltaic Tracker Optimization With Unique Fault Detection And Enhanced Combiner System, Caitlin Nicole Conway

Electrical & Computer Engineering Theses & Dissertations

Renewable energy resources are rapidly becoming extremely important as the world's energy consumption continues to rise. The most popular of these resources is solar energy and more specifically photovoltaic energy. Currently, solar modules on the market are still not highly efficient. In order to increase the productivity of solar energy systems, larger fixed-panel photovoltaic systems or tracking photovoltaic systems are utilized. The major disadvantage of larger photovoltaic systems is the increased space requirements. Therefore, tracking photovoltaic systems are the best alternative to achieve higher solar energy yields.

To date, the only method of monitoring tracking photovoltaic systems is with the …

Solar Photovoltaic Water Pumping For Multiple Use Systems (Mus) In Nepal, Fintan Mcloughlin, Aidan Duffy, Michael Conlon

Conference Papers

This paper investigates the performance of five solar photovoltaic (PV) Multiple Use Systems (MUS) used for water pumping. The solar MUS’s provide water for drinking, cleaning and micro-irrigation for some of the poorest communities in Nepal. In the absence of data logging, the performance of each system is investigated based on a series of rules of thumb to determine the predicted, expected and estimated demand and supply of water to small rural communities. The systems are compared based on their technical and economic performance and how this relates to local environmental, physical and socioeconomic characteristics at each location.

Impacts On The Electrical System Economics From Critical Design Factors Of Wave Energy Converters And Arrays, Fergus Sharkey, Michael Conlon, Kevin Gaughan

Conference papers

It is expected that ultimately, like offshore wind farms, electrical systems will make up to a quarter of the overall Capex of wave farms. This is a significant element of cost and consideration must be taken in the design of both individual wave energy converters (WECs) and arrays of WECs to ensure that these costs can be minimised. In a worst case scenario design decisions could increase the cost of the electrical system by several orders and ultimately make the technology uncompetitive.

This paper outlines the impacts on the cost of the electrical system arising from design factors of WECs …

Maximising Value Of Electrical Networks For Wave Energy Converter Arrays, Fergus Sharkey, Elva Bannon, Michael Conlon, Kevin Gaughan

Articles

Currently there are the beginnings of a commercial wave energy industry and the ultimate ambition will be to deploy Wave Energy Converters (WECs) in arrays, or wave farms, in a similar fashion to offshore wind. These arrays will require electrical networks to collect and export the generated electrical power to shore and onto the electrical grid. For large scale wind farms the inter-array and export electrical networks can represent more than 20% of the project’s capital expenditure. Submarine power cables account for a large proportion of this cost. The same is expected to be the same for WEC arrays.

This …

Electrical Design Considerations And Packaging Of Power Electronic Modules, Shijie Wang

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

A modern power electronic module can save significant energy usage in the power electronic systems by improving their switching efficiencies. One way to improve the efficiency of the power electronic module is to reduce its parasitic circuit elements. The purpose of this thesis is to investigate the mitigation of parasitic circuit elements in power electronic modules. General methods of mitigating parasitic inductances were analyzed by the Q3D Extractor and verified by the time-domain reflectometry (TDR) measurements. In most cases, the TDR measurement results closely matched those predicted by the Q3D Extractor. These methods were applied to design and analyze a …

Resource-Induced Voltage Flicker For Wave Energy Converters – Assessment Tools, Fergus Sharkey, Joe Macenri, Elva Bannon, Michael Conlon, Kevin Gaughan

Articles

For wave energy converters, the input resource has a typical period of 5–20 s depending on the site location and dominant seastates. Wave energy converters generally produce mechanical power twice per wave cycle and therefore depending on the storage available, the electrical power output has half the period of the input resource. These regular power changes induce a voltage change at the point of connection (POC) which is proportional to the amplitude of the power change and at the same frequency. Therefore the coupling of the input resource to the output power of a wave energy converter will cause voltage …

2-Dimensional Personal Motion Energy Harvester For Low Power Electronics, Manuel Gutierrez, Sean Scott, Dimitrios Peroulis

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

In a lab, it becomes crucial to have a way to monitor that lab workers aren’t exposed to too much radiation. Such a device that detects this should have an energy harvester so that batteries aren’t required. The need for an energy harvester that generates power from a user’s movements in 2 dimensions is needed. This energy harvester is needed to power a radiation monitor. An energy harvester that generates power based off movements in 2 dimensions was developed. The energy harvester was created through a series of prototypes. Each prototype was built from a CAD drawing and a stereolithography …

Alternative Wheelchair Control System, Jessica Hendricks, Tara Keigharn

Electrical Engineering

We geared this project towards assisting an individual with limited[1] motor function to operate a wheelchair. The product targets individuals who find use of a joystick is ineffective or painful. We focused our design on the wheelchair bought from Adaptive Driving Systems (Driving, 2013); but ultimately we would like to field a final product capable of applying to any electric wheelchair. Our goal: a person to operate the electric wheelchair using sensors that transmit a translation of an individual’s hand movement through a wireless transmission to a microcontroller installed on the wheel chair that then controls the wheelchair’s movement. …

Cal Poly Wind Power Research Center Power Regulator, Ricardo Rodriguez, Steven Bounchareune

Electrical Engineering

Through funding from the California Central Coast Research Partnership (C3RP) the

CPWRC, led by Dr. Patrick Lemieux, has erected a horizontal axis wind turbine (HAWT) at the

Cal Poly Escuela Ranch site EL04. With the help of Dr. John Ridgely and Dr. Art MacCarley, the team has implemented a controller that delivers the power being generated by the turbine to a resistor bank which maintains a safe working speed for the turbine. The authors objectives for this project are to (1) become familiar with the operation of the turbine, (2) develop an AC-DC converter that regulates the output of the …

Multiple Input Single Output (Miso) Tablet/ Phone Charger, Kevin Wong

Master's Theses

This thesis entails the design and implementation of a multiple input single output (MISO) DC-DC converter using the flyback topology to charge tablets/ smartphones or any USB powered portable device. The MISO converter will enable the use of various renewable energy sources such as a solar panel/ rechargeable battery combination, bicycle dynamo, hydroelectric power, and wind turbine. This paper will cover the design, simulations, and test results of the MISO converter. The flyback topology was chosen due to its low part count and its efficiency at low power. The proposed converter has a nominal 12V input to output USB 2.0 …

Design, Fabrication, And Testing Of An Emr Based Orbital Debris Impact Testing Platform, Jeffrey J. Maniglia Jr.

Master's Theses

This paper describes the changes made from Cal Poly’s initial railgun system, the Mk. 1 railgun, to the Mk. 1.1 system, as well as the design, fabrication, and testing of a newer and larger Mk. 2 railgun system. The Mk. 1.1 system is developed as a more efficient alteration of the original Mk. 1 system, but is found to be defective due to hardware deficiencies and failure, as well as unforeseen efficiency losses. A Mk. 2 system is developed and built around donated hardware from the Naval Postgraduate School. The Mk. 2 system strove to implement an efficient, augmented, electromagnetic …

The Bicycle-Powered Smartphone Charger, Chris Arntzen

Master's Theses

This thesis entails the design and fabrication of a smartphone charger that is powered by a bicycle dynamo hub. In addition to the design and validation of the charger prototype, this thesis involves the testing and characterization of the dynamo hub power source, the design and construction of specialized test equipment, and the design and prototyping of a handlebar-mounted case for the smartphone and charging electronics. With the intention of making the device a commercial product, price, aesthetics, and marketability are of importance to the design. An appropriate description of the charger circuit is a microcontroller-based energy management system, tailored …

Bi-Directional Flyback Dc-Dc Converter For Battery System Of The Dc House Project, Austin J. Luan

Master's Theses

The DC House project strongly relies on renewable energy sources to provide power to the house for various loads. However, when these sources are unable to provide power at a certain time, a back-up energy source from a battery must be readily available to fulfill the house’s power needs. This thesis proposes a bi-directional flyback power converter to allow a single-stage power path to charge the battery from and to discharge the battery to the DC House 48 V system bus. The design, simulation, and hardware prototype of the proposed flyback bi-directional converter will be conducted to demonstrate its feasibility. …

Modeling And Analysis Of A Dynamic Voltage Regulator, Timothy David Haskell

Master's Theses

Increased government funding and incentives in recent years has led to an increase in the number of grid-tied renewable energy sources as their economic benefits become more renowned. Unfortunately, the outputs of these renewable resources are often highly variable, resulting in undesirable voltage disruptions that are harmful to sensitive loads. In addition to the energy variability of renewable energy sources, random voltage sags, swells and disruptions are already a major issue in power systems. Recent advances in power electronic devices have provided a platform for new solutions to the voltage support problem in power systems. One promising solution is the …

Intermediate Band Solar Cells Based On Inas Quantum Dots Embedded In Ingaas Quantum Well, Ramesh Vasan

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Intermediate band solar cells based on quantum dots and quantum wells with anti-reflection coating are investigated in this thesis. The demand for high efficient solar cells as an alternate source of energy is the main motivation for this research project. Intermediate band solar cells based on quantum dots were the subject of intensive research in recent years. High power conversion efficiency was predicted from InAs/GaAs intermediate band solar cells as the presence of InAs quantum dots increased the absorption below the band gap of the host material.

In this thesis, an attempt has been made to further increase the absorption …

Synthesis Of Optimized Inp/Zns Core/Shell Nanocrystals And Tio2 Nanotubes For Quantum Dot Sensitized Solar Cells, Seungyong Lee

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Synthesis of InP/ZnS core/shell nanocrystals and TiO₂ nanotubes and the optimization study to couple them together were explored for quantum dot sensitized solar cells. Its intrinsic nontoxicity makes the direct band gap InP/ZnS core/shell be one of the most promising semiconductor nanocrystals for optoelectric applications, with the advantage of tuning the optical absorption range in the desired solar spectrum region. Highly luminescent and monodisperse InP/ZnS nanocrystals were synthesized in a non-coordinating solvent. By varying the synthesis scheme, different size InP/ZnS nanocrystals with emission peaks ranging from 520 nm to 620 nm were grown. For the purpose of ensuring air …

Biparametric Analyses Of Charge Trapping In Cd0.9Zn0.1Te Based Virtual Frisch Grid Detectors, S. K. Chaudhuri, K. J. Zavalla, R. M. Krishna, K. C. Mandal

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Experimental Determination Of Electron-Hole Pair Creation Energy In 4h-Sic Epitaxial Layer: An Absolute Calibration Approach, S. K. Chaudhuri, K. J. Zavalla, K. C. Mandal

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Wireless Sensor Networks And The Internet Of Things, Yingtao Jiang, Lei Zhang, Ling Wang

Electrical & Computer Engineering Faculty Research

It is estimated that mobile internet devices that can act as sensors will outnumber humans this year (2013), and by 2015, there will be about 15 billion internet-connected devices. Related applications are thriving in commercial, civic, and scientific operations that involve sensors, web, and services, leading by both academic societies and industry companies. It is commonly accepted that the next generation of internet is becoming the “Internet of Things (IoT)” which is a worldwide network of interconnected objects and their virtual representations uniquely addressable based on standard communication protocols. Identified by a unique address, any object including computers, mobile phones, …

Investigation Of Cds Nanowires And Planar Films For Enhanced Performance As Window Layers In Cds-Cdte Solar Cell Devices, Jianhao Chen

Theses and Dissertations--Electrical and Computer Engineering

Cadmium sulfide (CdS) and cadmium telluride (CdTe) are two leading semiconductor materials used in the fabrication of thin film solar cells of relatively high power conversion efficiency and low manufacturing cost. In this work, CdS/CdTe solar cells with a varying set of processing parameters and device designs were fabricated and characterized for comparative evaluation. Studies were undertaken to elucidate the effects of (i) each step in fabrication and (ii) parameters like thickness, sheet resistance, light absorptivity solution concentration, inert gas pressure etc. Best results were obtained when the thickness of CdS planar film for the window layer was in the …

Power Control Of Single-Stage Pv Inverter For Distribution System Volt-Var Optimization, Xiao Liu

Theses and Dissertations--Electrical and Computer Engineering

The output power variability of intermittent renewable sources can cause significant fluctuations in distribution system voltages. A local linear controller that exploits the capability of a photovoltaic inverter to provide both real and reactive power is described. This controller substitutes reactive power for real power when fluctuations in the output of the photovoltaic source are experienced. In this way, the inverter can help mitigate distribution system voltage fluctuations. In order to provide real and reactive to the grid, a three-phase grid-connected single-stage photovoltaic system with maximum power point tracking and power control is described. A method of reducing the current …

Tunable Fano Resonances Based On Two-Beam Interference In Microring Resonator, Ting Hu, Ping Yu, Chen Qui, Huiye Qui, Fan Wang, Mei Yang, Xiaoqing Jiang, Hui Yu, Jianyi Yang

Electrical & Computer Engineering Faculty Research

In this paper, a resonant system is demonstrated on silicon-on-insulator wafer to achieve tunable Fano resonances. In this system, the Fano resonance originates from the interference of two beams resonant in the microring resonator. The shapes of the Fano resonances are tunable through controlling the phase difference of the two beams. Both large slope and high extinctionratio (ER) are obtained when the phase difference is 0.5π or 1.5π. Experimental results show that Fano resonances with steep slope and ER over 20 dB are achieved in the whole free spectral range by controlling the microheaters to meet the phase condition.

Estimation Of Performance Indices For The Planning Of Sustainable Transportation Systems, Alexander Paz, Pankaj Maheshwari

Electrical & Computer Engineering Faculty Research

In the context of sustainable transportation systems, previous studies have either focused only on the transportation systemor have not used a methodology that enables the treatment of incomplete, vague, and qualitative information associated with the available data. This study proposes a system of systems (SOS) and a fuzzy logic modeling approach. The SOS includes the Transportation, Activity, and Environment systems. The fuzzy logic modeling approach enables the treatment of the vagueness associated with some of the relevant data. Performance Indices (PIs) are computed for each system using a number of performance measures. The PIs illustrate the aggregated performance of each …

Framework For Simulation Of Heterogeneous Mpsoc For Design Space Exploration, Bisrat Tafesse, Venkatesan Muthukumar

Electrical & Computer Engineering Faculty Research

Due to the ever-growing requirements in high performance data computation, multiprocessor systems have been proposed to solve the bottlenecks in uniprocessor systems. Developing efficient multiprocessor systems requires effective exploration of design choices like application scheduling, mapping, and architecture design. Also, fault tolerance in multiprocessors needs to be addressed. With the advent of nanometer-process technology for chip manufacturing, realization of multiprocessors on SoC (MpSoC) is an active field of research. Developing efficient low power, fault-tolerant task scheduling, and mapping techniques for MpSoCs require optimized algorithms that consider the various scenarios inherent in multiprocessor environments. Therefore there exists a need to develop …

Economic Challenges And Optimisation Of Ocean Energy Electrical Systems, Fergus Sharkey

Books/Book chapters

No abstract provided.

Online Nonintrusive Condition Monitoring And Fault Detection For Wind Turbines, Xiang Gong

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

The goal of this dissertation research is to develop online nonintrusive condition monitoring and fault detection methods for wind turbine generators (WTGs). The proposed methods use only the current measurements that have already been used by the control and protection systems of WTGs; no additional sensors or data acquisition devices are needed. Current-based condition monitoring and fault detection techniques have great economic benefits and the potential to be adopted by the wind energy industry. However, there are challenges in using current measurements for wind turbine condition monitoring and fault detection. First, it is a challenge to extract WTG fault signatures …

Smart Wall Plug Design For The Dc House Project, Edward Constant Sibal

Master's Theses

The DC House project at Cal Poly State University faces a challenge of supplying DC voltage to household appliances. Each appliance in the DC House constitutes a DC load that has a unique voltage and power rating, hence the need to develop a smart DC wall plug that will automatically adjust to the operating voltage required by any DC load. This thesis entails a proof of concept design of the smart DC wall plug which can automatically detect an appliance’s voltage rating. The design employs a dc-dc converter in conjunction with a microcontroller to sense load current to properly adjust …