Power and Energy Commons^™

Weight Controlled Electric Skateboard, Zachary Barram, Carson Bertozzi, Vishnu Dodballapur

Computer Engineering

Technology and the way that humans interact is becoming more vital and omnipresent with every passing day. However, human interface device designers suffer from the increasingly popular “designed for me or people like me” syndrome. This design philosophy inherently limits accessibility and usability of technology to those like the designer. This places severe limits of usability to those who are not fully able as well as leaves non-traditional human interface devices unexplored. This project set out to explore a previously uncharted human interface device, on an electric skateboard, and compare it send user experience with industry leading human interface devices.

Gold Tree Solar Farm - Machine Learning To Predict Solar Power Generation, Jonathon T. Scott

Computer Science and Software Engineering

Solar energy causes a strain on the electrical grid because of the uncontrollable nature of the factors that affect power generation. Utilities are often required to balance solar generation facilities to meet consumer demand, which often includes the costly process of activating/deactivating a fossil fuel facility. Therefore, there is considerable interest in increasing the accuracy and the granularity of solar power generation predictions in order to reduce the cost of grid management. This project aims to evaluate how sky imaging technology may contribute to the accuracy of those predictions.

Smart Dc Wall Outlet Design With Improved Load Voltage Detection, Patrick Donovon Granieri

Master's Theses

A standard home in the United States has access to the 120V AC power grid for use with home appliances. Many electronics used at home are powered by a DC power supply, which loses energy in the conversion from AC power. The DC House project avoids any conversion between AC and DC by storing energy in batteries as DC power and supplying it directly to DC appliances. While AC systems feature a standardized output voltage, no such standard exists for DC systems. The Smart DC Wall Outlet solves this by automatically adjusting its output voltage to meet any required DC …

Anonymous And Efficient Message Authentication Scheme For Smart Grid, Libing Wu, Jing Wang, Sherali Zeadally, Debiao He

Information Science Faculty Publications

Smart grid has emerged as the next-generation electricity grid with power flow optimization and high power quality. Smart grid technologies have attracted the attention of industry and academia in the last few years. However, the tradeoff between security and efficiency remains a challenge in the practical deployment of the smart grid. Most recently, Li et al. proposed a lightweight message authentication scheme with user anonymity and claimed that their scheme is provably secure. But we found that their scheme fails to achieve mutual authentication and mitigate some typical attacks (e.g., impersonation attack, denial of service attack) in the smart grid …

Autonomous Combat Robot, Andrew J. Szabo Ii, Chris Heldman, Tristin Weber, Tanya Tebcherani, Holden Leblanc, Fabian Ardeljan

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

This honors project will also serve as an engineering senior design project.

The objective is to design and build the software and electrical systems for a 60 lb weight class combat robot that will function autonomously and outperform manually driven robots during competition.

While running autonomously, the robot will use LiDAR sensors to detect and attack opponent robots. This robot will also be able to be remote controlled in manual mode. This will mitigate the risk in case the autonomy or sensors fail. LED lights on the robot will indicate whether it is in autonomous or manual mode. The system …

Curricular Optimization: Solving For The Optimal Student Success Pathway, William G. Thompson-Arjona

Theses and Dissertations--Electrical and Computer Engineering

Considering the significant investment of higher education made by students and their families, graduating in a timely manner is of the utmost importance. Delay attributed to drop out or the retaking of a course adds cost and negatively affects a student’s academic progression. Considering this, it becomes paramount for institutions to focus on student success in relation to term scheduling.

Often overlooked, complexity of a course schedule may be one of the most important factors in whether or not a student successfully completes his or her degree. More often than not students entering an institution as a first time full …

Automatic Performance Optimization On Heterogeneous Computer Systems Using Manycore Coprocessors, Chenggang Lai

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Emerging computer architectures and advanced computing technologies, such as Intel’s Many Integrated Core (MIC) Architecture and graphics processing units (GPU), provide a promising solution to employ parallelism for achieving high performance, scalability and low power consumption. As a result, accelerators have become a crucial part in developing supercomputers. Accelerators usually equip with different types of cores and memory. It will compel application developers to reach challenging performance goals. The added complexity has led to the development of task-based runtime systems, which allow complex computations to be expressed as task graphs, and rely on scheduling algorithms to perform load balancing between …

Implementation Of Secure Dnp3 Architecture Of Scada System For Smart Grids, Uday Bhaskar Boyanapalli

Master of Science in Computer Science Theses

With the recent advances in the power grid system connecting to the internet, data sharing, and networking enables space for hackers to maliciously attack them based on their vulnerabilities. Vital stations in the smart grid are the generation, transmission, distribution, and customer substations are connected and controlled remotely by the network. Every substation is controlled by a Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) system which communicates on DNP3 protocol on Internet/IP which has many security vulnerabilities. This research will focus on Distributed Network Protocol (DNP3) communication which is used in the smart grid to communicate between the controller devices. We …

Efficacy Of Multi-Threshold Null Convention Logic In Low-Power Applications, Brent Bell

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In order for an asynchronous design paradigm such as Multi-Threshold NULL Convention Logic (MTNCL) to be adopted by industry, it is important for circuit designers to be aware of its advantages and drawbacks especially with respect to power usage. The power tradeoff between MTNCL and synchronous designs depends on many different factors including design type, circuit size, process node, and pipeline granularity. Each of these design dimensions influences the active power and the leakage power comparisons. This dissertation analyzes the effects of different design dimensions on power consumption and the associated rational for these effects. Results show that while MTNCL …

Analog Sorting Using Pulse Width Modulation, Riley C. Olson

Computer Engineering

As time goes on, computers become more and more powerful. However, as processing time becomes less of a limiting factor for computing tasks, power consumption takes its place for many tasks. This paper proposes and tests a new method for sorting analog signals. This new sorting method converts analog signals into Pulse Width Modulated(PWM) signals of varying duty cycle , which are then sorted by a simple network of combinational logic, and then converted to a normal binary representation. In order to implement this new method, multiple circuits had to be designed and and tested to ensure their functionality and …

Microgrid Protection Student Laboratory: Human-Machine Interface And Scada Database, Nathan P. Martinez

Electrical Engineering

The electric utility system, a ubiquitous and fundamental component of modern life, has changed more in the last 20 years than the last 100. With more homes and businesses installing distributed energy resources (DERs) such as solar panels, battery storage, and other intermittent sources, massive changes need to take place in the electric transmission and distribution systems. Engineers must develop a new skill set for a modern utility industry. This project summarizes a component for a new laboratory class aimed at power engineering students at Cal Poly which supports the laboratory through the creation of a human-machine interface (HMI) and …

Fault Identification And Location For Distribution Network With Distributed Generations, Wen Fan, Yuan Liao

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications

Power distribution networks with distributed generations may experience faults. It is essential to promptly locate the fault for fast repair and restoration. This paper presents a novel method for identifying the faulted section and accurate location of faults that occur on power distribution grid. Appropriate matrices are set up to represent meter locations on the grid and the topology of the grid. The voltage and current measurements obtained are utilized to decide the fault sections. Then fault location is determined by solving equations that link measurements and fault locations through bus impedance matrix. The method is applicable to both single …

Tolerance Sensitivity Analysis And Robust Optimal Design Method Of A Surface-Mounted Permanent Magnet Motor By Using A Hybrid Response Surface Method Considering Manufacturing Tolerances, Cha-Seung Jun, Byung-Il Kwon, Ohbong Kwon

Publications and Research

This paper presents a robust optimal design method using a hybrid response surface method (H-RSM) which directly finds an optimal point satisfying a target Z-value or a probability of failure. Through three steps, this paper achieves the goal that is to increase the open-circuit airgap flux (OCAF) in a surface-mounted permanent magnet motor and decrease its variation caused by variations of the airgap lengths including an additional one between permanent magnets and rotor back yoke. First, the OCAF equation is derived from the magnetic equivalent circuit (MEC) considering the additional airgap. Then, the equation is validated by comparing its results …

Comparison Of Data Transfer Alternatives In Asynchronous Circuits, Mark Howard

Computer Science and Computer Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

Digital integrated circuits (ICs) have become progressively complex in their functionality. This has sped up the demand for asynchronous architectures, which operate without any clocking scheme, considering new challenges in the timing of synchronous systems. Asynchronous ICs have less stringent environmental constraints and are capable of maintaining reliable operation in extreme environments, while also enjoying potential benefits such as low power consumption, high modularity, and improved performance. However, when the traditional bus architecture of synchronous systems is applied to asynchronous designs, handshaking protocols required for asynchronous circuit operation result in significantly increased power consumption, offsetting the low power benefit of …

Evaluation Of Resiliency In A Wide-Area Backup Protection System Via Model Checking, Kolby H. Elliot

Theses and Dissertations

Modern civilization relies heavily on having access to reliable power sources. Recent history has shown that present day protection systems are not adequate. Numerous backup protection (BP) systems have been proposed to mitigate the impact of primary protection system failures. Many of these novel BP systems rely on autonomous agents communicating via wide-area networks. These systems are highly complex and their control logic is based on distributed computing. Model checking has been shown to be a powerful tool in analyzing the behavior of distributed systems. In this research the model checker SPIN is used to evaluate the resiliency of an …

Bandwidth Analysis Of A Tightly-Packed Crossed-Dipole Array For Satellite Communications, Lawrence J. Lee

Theses and Dissertations

A bandwidth analysis of a tightly-packed crossed-dipole array antenna is presented in this thesis. A parametric study is described which varies the element spacing in the array and the resulting change in the terminal impedances is reported. The increased mutual coupling seen by the elements as a result of smaller element spacings is shown to minimize the variation in the value of the elements terminal currents across a 0.3 GHz to 3.0 GHz frequency range. This small variation in current translates into a minimal variation in the terminal impedances for a fixed excitation voltage. This is shown to be an …

Anomaly Inference Based On Heterogeneous Data Sources In An Electrical Distribution System, Yachen Tang

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

Harnessing the heterogeneous data sets would improve system observability. While the current metering infrastructure in distribution network has been utilized for the operational purpose to tackle abnormal events, such as weather-related disturbance, the new normal we face today can be at a greater magnitude. Strengthening the inter-dependencies as well as incorporating new crowd-sourced information can enhance operational aspects such as system reconfigurability under extreme conditions. Such resilience is crucial to the recovery of any catastrophic events. In this dissertation, it is focused on the anomaly of potential foul play within an electrical distribution system, both primary and secondary networks as …

Low Power Wide Area Networks (Lpwan): Technology Review And Experimental Study On Mobility Effect, Dhaval Patel

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In the past decade, we have witnessed explosive growth in the number of low-power embedded and Internet-connected devices, reinforcing the new paradigm, Internet of Things (IoT). IoT devices like smartphones, home security systems, smart electric meters, garage parking indicators, etc., have penetrated deeply into our daily lives. These IoT devices are increasingly attached and operated in mobile objects like unmanned vehicles, trains, airplanes, etc. The low power wide area network (LPWAN), due to its long-range, low-power and low-cost communication capability, is actively considered by academia and industry as the future wireless communication standard for IoT. However, despite the increasing popularity …

Light Sensing Automated Blinds, Andrew B. Hodges, Ryan C. Flick

Electrical Engineering

This project is solving the problem of wasted energy within buildings and homes, because currently the lights turned on inside building do not utilize natural, ambient light from the sun. Rather than having unnecessary light from a light source, the automated light sensing smart blinds can sense the amount of light outside the window and in the room, and then adjust the angle of the blinds to save energy by utilizing the available outdoor light. This way, the light source will not be running at maximum power output while there is excess light coming through the window. This project aims …

Wind Turbine Noise And Wind Speed Prediction, Tyler H. Blanchard

College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations

In order to meet the US Department of Energy projected target of 35% of US energy coming from wind by 2050, there is a strong need to study the management and development of wind turbine technology and its impact on human health, wildlife and environment. The prediction of wind turbine noise and its propagation is very critical to study the impacts of wind turbine noise for long term adoption and acceptance by neighboring communities. The prediction of wind speed is critical in the assessment of feasibility of a potential wind turbine site. This work presents a study on prediction of …

Underwater Robot, Joseph E. Beck, Matthew Crislip, Cody Bobek, Peyton Lucas

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

Remotely Operated Vehicles (ROVs) are remote controlled drones operated by a non-local user. The ROV we plan to build is connected by a tethering wire to a floating buoy that contains an antenna which will send signals between the base station and the ROV. The ROV is equipped with a video camera, ballast system, propulsion system, lights, and a depth sensor. The ROV will transmit a live video feed to the user, while receiving input signals to control its movement from the base station.

Wireless Mesh Networks For Scada Systems, Zachary Weisman

Computer Engineering

No abstract provided.

Power Supply For Driving High Power Leds With Wireless Control, Joshua C. Avery

Computer Engineering

This project is the design of a power supply for driving high power light emitting diodes (LEDs) with wireless control. The project is divided into two sections, the power supply for driving the LED lights, and the wireless control and fan power supply.

Energy Harvesting And Storage: The Catalyst To The Power Constraint For Leveraging Internet Of Things (Iot) On Trains, Kelechi Nwogu

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

The success of Wireless Sensor Networks is heavily constrained by its reliance on storage technology like batteries, which are a finite resource. Whilst the number of transistors in an IC doubles every 18 months, the energy density of batteries is relatively flat during the same time period. This is a key challenge in leveraging the Internet of Things on trains.

The gravity of this problem is increased by an order of magnitude when the network is to be scaled up to hundreds or thousands of nodes. Comprehensive research and development efforts have been devoted to building ultra-low power sensors. These …

Model-Based Condition Monitoring And Power Management For Rechargeable Electrochemical Batteries, Taesic Kim

School of Computing: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Rechargeable multicell batteries have been used in various electrical and electronic systems, e.g., renewable energy systems, electric-drive vehicles, commercial electronics, etc. However, there are still concerns about the reliability and performance degradation of rechargeable batteries caused by low thermal stability and the aging process. A properly designed battery management system (BMS) is required for condition monitoring and control of multicell batteries to ensure their safety, reliability, and optimal performance. The goal of this dissertation research was to develop a novel BMS for rechargeable multicell batteries.

First, this research developed high-fidelity battery models for online condition monitoring and power management of …

Comparing The Efficiency Of Heterogeneous And Homogeneous Data Center Workloads, Brandon Kimmons

College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations

Abstract

Information Technology, as an industry, is growing very quickly to keep pace with increased data storage and computing needs. Data growth, if not planned or managed correctly, can have larger efficiency implications on your data center as a whole. The long term reduction in efficiency will increase costs over time and increase operational overhead. Similarly, increases in processor efficiency have led to increased system density in data centers. This can increase cost and operational overhead in your data center infrastructure.

This paper proposes the idea that balanced data center workloads are more efficient in comparison to similar levels of …

Stargrazer One: A New Architecture For Distributed Maximum Power Point Tracking Of Solar Photovoltaic Sources, Edgard Munoz-Coreas

Theses and Dissertations--Electrical and Computer Engineering

The yield from a solar photovoltaic (PV) source is dependent on factors such as light and temperature. A control system called a maximum power point tracker (MPPT) ensures that the yield from a solar PV source is maximized in spite of these factors. This thesis presents a novel implementation of a perturb and observe (PO) MPPT.

The implementation uses a switched capacitor step down converter and a custom digital circuit implementation of the PO algorithm. Working in tandem, the switched capacitor step down converter and the custom digital circuit implementation were able to successfully track the maximum power point of …

Wirelessly Controlled Smart Outlet, Andrew Godsil, Ariel Dubinsky

Electrical Engineering

Popularity of home automation devices has increased greatly in recent years due to higher affordability and simplicity through smartphone and tablet connectivity. For the purpose of this experiment, we have developed the Smart Outlet: a stand-alone communication unit, used to connect home outlets to the internet. The Smart Outlet controls lighting and simple appliances throughout the home, remotely, using wireless commands from the web. A Google Calendar interface directly controls the outlets’ function by scheduling them with dedicated calendar events. The calendar’s interface can even be accessed from multiple different platforms (i.e. phones, computers, tablets) for the convenience of all …

Idpal – A Partially-Adiabatic Energy-Efficient Logic Family: Theory And Applications To Secure Computing, Mihail T. Cutitaru

Electrical & Computer Engineering Theses & Dissertations

Low-power circuits and issues associated with them have gained a significant amount of attention in recent years due to the boom in portable electronic devices. Historically, low-power operation relied heavily on technology scaling and reduced operating voltage, however this trend has been slowing down recently due to the increased power density on chips. This dissertation introduces a new very-low power partially-adiabatic logic family called Input-Decoupled Partially-Adiabatic Logic (IDPAL) with applications in low-power circuits. Experimental results show that IDPAL reduces energy usage by 79% compared to equivalent CMOS implementations and by 25% when compared to the best adiabatic implementation. Experiments ranging …

Battery Management System, Michael Desando, Kyle Woody

Electrical Engineering

Problem Statement:

There have been recent reports of multi-million dollar companies having to recall entire projects due to their BMS’s malfunctioning or operating incorrectly. The purpose of this project is to analyze the future of batteries, the Lithium-Ion cell, and to exercise a BMS to better understand its capabilities and possible cases for errors. Lithium ion batteries are intolerant of overcharge and overdischarge. Abuse of this kind can result in high temperatures, venting of gases, fire, or explosion. Therefore battery management systems have been devised to prevent such abuse. Recent events such as fires on the Boeing Dreamliner and the …