Power and Energy Commons^™

Dc To Dc Usb-C Charger, Nikki Gmerek, Kenneth Nguyen, Uriel Serna

Electrical Engineering

The DC House USB-C Charger will convert the 48V input from the DC house, found on the Cal Poly campus, to 3 USB-C outputs: 5V, 12V, and 24 volts. The converter will deliver a total of 185 Watts out across all 3 outputs, with an efficiency greater than 82% at full load. The USB-C ports will be used to connect to compatible phones, laptops or any other device for charging/powering purposes. The goal of this project is to develop the most efficient and safe converter to deliver power to multiple outputs using USB-C, for items as small as a cell …

Dc House Smart Pathway Lighting System, Benjamin H. Tan, Rafael Santiago, Brendan Schoemehl

Electrical Engineering

The Student Experimental Farm (SEF) is a two-acre site where students are able to create projects and experiments. It is also the location of the DC House project, a house with electricity provided by DC power as opposed to the traditional AC power. The motive of the DC house project is to provide affordable and renewable electricity for people living in remote areas where ac power grids are not available. Currently, the SEF does not have any lighting, so students would have to work in the dark after the sun sets. By creating a smart lighting system for the pathway …

Dc-Dc Converter For Electric Vehicle, Jason Y. Zhou, Nicholas James Mah

Electrical Engineering

In this work, a DC-DC converter is designed for an electric vehicle. The DC-DC converter is designed to provide 500W with a 200-400V input and a 12-15V adjustable output. Electric vehicle sales are beginning to increase in popularity and the need for DC-DC converters to siphon power from the tractive system is not yet fully satisfied, especially for single-seater class vehicles. Additionally, improving performance in efficiency without sacrificing wide input voltage range can benefit future DC-DC converter designs. In the end, a forward active clamp DC-DC converter is designed and tested. Additionally, spreadsheet calculators, LTSpice simulations, and Matlab scripts were …

Usb-C Power Adapter For Dc House Project, Tyler G. Starr, Ezzeddeen Gazali

Electrical Engineering

Despite the importance of electricity and the impact it has on our daily lives, many people around the world still live without this essential utility today. According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), approximately 1.1 billion people in the world did not have access to electricity in 2017. The DC House Project at Cal Poly aims to provide electricity to people living in rural areas by directly utilizing DC energy generated from renewable or human powered sources without the need for DC-AC conversions. However, one significant issue is the lack of a standardized DC wall socket. Standards for AC wall …

Microgrid Renewable Energy Integration, Do Quang Thanh Vo

Electrical Engineering

The Microgrid is a small-scale electrical system that is designed to give Cal Poly students hands-on experience on power generation, system protection, distribution, and automation that would otherwise be very difficult to experiment in a large-scale model.

To closely replicate the modern electrical grid, a renewable energy source shall be added to the Microgrid in conjunction with the existing synchronous generators. Electrical engineering student, Virginia Yan initiated this effort, namely Grid-Tied Solar System project [1], by designing and constructing a set of solar panels and microinverter for future connection to the Microgrid. The scope of Virginia’s project was, however, limited …

Submerged Solar Energy Harvesters Performance For Underwater Applications, Mohammad Abdellatif, Salsabeel Kamal, Ghazal M. Al-Sayyad, Rana Abdelmoteleb, Sameh O. Abdellatif

Electrical Engineering

underwater communications is the transmission of data in an unguided water medium through wireless carriers such as; optical waves, radio-frequency waves and acoustic waves. Such type of communication system is utilized to enable the realization of the ocean exploration system and other marine monitoring/exploration systems. Seeking for a sustainable setup, the enrolment of energy harvesting sources in these wireless nodes have been presented as a replacement of the short-life-time battery sources. In this paper, there are experimental measurements as well as theoretical studies for two different light harvesters have been conducted underwater with considering the air measurements as a reference. …

Dc-Dc 4-Switch Buck-Boost Converter For Energy Harvesting From Elliptical Machines, Alexander C. Samietz, Gustavo Guzman

Electrical Engineering

The senior project report documents the process of replacing the network of resistors inside an elliptical machine with a DC-DC buck-boost converter. The buck-boost DC-DC converter accepts a wide input range of 5-60 Volts, with an output of 36 Volts for the most efficient use of the already available microinverter. The microinverter reclaims the lost energy and safely distributes it back to the electrical grid. The addition of this project reduces heat emissions from wasted energy and shrinks the carbon footprint of its users.

Grid-Tied Solar System, Virginia Yan

Electrical Engineering

Distribution level solar energy generation has gained importance and popularity, because it helps create a sustainable electricity system while reducing the harmful environmental impacts our current power systems have. This project proposes an alternative energy source, a laboratory-scale grid-connected photovoltaic system. A KC120-1 solar panel produces 120 Watts maximum. A grid-tied solar power inverter does DC-to-AC conversion and minimizes energy transfer losses. The inverter also has an anti-islanding feature, which senses a power outage and prevents back-feeding through isolating the circuit. The circuit breakers isolate electrical components and protect the circuit. Schweitzer Engineering Laboratories SEL-751 feeder protection relay and SEL-735 …

Comparison Of Organic And Inorganic Solar Photovoltaic Systems, Khulan Orgil

Electrical Engineering

This senior project report addresses the consumer’s need for accurate and easily accessible information when making a solar panel purchasing decision. Thus, the project analyzes and compares the costs and benefits of organic and inorganic photovoltaic systems during their life cycle. The cost comparison includes analysis of the environmental and economic costs of materials, production, installation, and disposal. The benefit comparison includes analysis of the economic, environmental, and social benefits accrued during the system’s lifetime. With the project’s data, consumers can make more informed decisions to fit their specific needs.

Dc House Solar Panel Cleaner, Sarahanne Heredia, Sophia Deguia

Electrical Engineering

Solar panels lose 0.05% of their power conversion efficiency per day due to soil accumulation, according to an experiment conducted by the University of California, San Diego in 2013 [18]. The project is an electro-mechanical cleaning system that effectively and efficiently cleans solar panels at set intervals. A drip irrigation system with spray jets was attached to a water pump and Arduino, both powered by the DC House Project solar panel battery. The DC House solar panel was the targeted panel set up for the project. Several components of the design could have been chosen more optimally for the system; …

Circuit Breaker Module, Garvin Yee, Yei Trinh

Electrical Engineering

The circuit breaker module for this design project is a proof of concept that demonstrates the functionality, feasibility, and attainability of a consumer grade power systems analysis device suitable for college laboratory use. The goal of this project was to create the final iteration of a module that has been developed and refined over the course of previous years. The Cal Poly Electrical Engineering Department intends to use this design to produce circuit breaker modules intended for fault analysis. With the current changes made to the previous modules, the current circuit breaker is lighter, safer, and more universally reproducible. The …

Analysis Of Improved Multiphase Buck Converter, Usamah Riaz Ahmad, Scott Wu

Electrical Engineering

While the number of transistors per microprocessor is rapidly increasing, the power requirements of converters are getting more and more important. The amount of current is increasing, while at the same time the output voltage is steadily decreasing. Today’s boards are exceeding 100A, while the buck converters have their output voltage below 1 V. Due to these new power requirements, multiphase buck converters are becoming more popular. In addition, this topology is usually used with voltage regulator modules (VRM).

The TPS40090EVM-002 board was used as the original multiphase buck with an input voltage of 12 V and output voltage of …

Investigating Efficiency Of Ac Direct Drive Of Led Lighting, Miles Davis Head

Electrical Engineering

This project explores the rapidly-expanding area of AC direct drive for LED lighting. AC LED driving does not use typical DC-DC converter-based driving but uses semiconductor switches and a linear regulator to activate a number of LEDs proportional to the input voltage at any given time. This allows bulky, expensive magnetics to be eliminated from the system. The goal of this project was to develop a flexible simulation of a common AC LED system to find areas of significant power loss and attempt to improve them. This allows future versions of an AC LED system to start with major loss …

Ewall Inverter Project, Andrew Douglas Tsau, Alex Lopez

Electrical Engineering

The objective of this project is to demonstrate the capabilities of a Raspberry Pi when used as a grid-tied, bi-directional power inverter for renewable energy storage applications. Due to its economical nature, this system would play a large role in the growing solar industry by making solar energy more accessible, affordable, and easier to install. The inverter uses a single-phase H-Bridge to generate a sine wave from a proprietary wall mounted battery. To improve power quality, an enhanced low pass filter is added to provide a better drop off to reduce extraneous harmonics. The system synchronizes this synthetic sine wave …

Design And Test Of Wide Input And Output Constant Current Led Driver, Kean Wee

Electrical Engineering

This senior project aims to provide design and test the performance of a DC-DC constant current LED driver for use in a larger DC smart building infrastructure. In this instance, a SEPIC topology is chosen to provide high efficiency output current at output voltages that can be above or below the input voltage. This is challenging since the same design must operate at similar efficiency for vastly different environmental conditions. As a part of a larger system, the design must be able to perform the given task consistently regardless of changes to the source and load power.

The design uses …

Electric Upgrades - Supercapacitor Electric Bicycle, John Chen, Wilson Fletcher, Spencer Esparza

Electrical Engineering

Supercapacitors provide high current capabilities compared to conventional lithium-ion batteries, allowing for fast charging and discharging of electrical energy. This project seeks to test the benefits of supercapacitors in an electric bicycle unit in order to gain higher regenerative energy. The main components of the bicycle are its regenerative motor, supercapacitor array, and motor controller. Developing the project will provide data on the feasibility of using alternative battery storage and charging.

Passive Balancing Battery Management System For Cal Poly Racing's Formula Sae Electric Vehicle, Alvin Joseph Ha

Electrical Engineering

This senior project aims to replace the current battery management system (BMS) on Cal Poly’s Formula SAE electric vehicle with a more versatile, advanced, and reliable system. A BMS manages a rechargeable battery by ensuring the battery device operator’s safety, protecting battery cell integrity, prolonging battery lifetime, maintaining functional design requirements, and sending optimal usage information to the application controller. Passive balancing maximizes a battery pack’s capacity by dissipating excess energy through heat to regulate cell state of charge.

Wind/Hydro Generator Simulator, Michael Timothy Djaja, Christopher James Rotsios

Electrical Engineering

The intention of this project is to make it easier for people without reliable access to electricity to implement their own sources of electrical generation. The ability to simulate different sources of generation allows people in need to find what source of generation will most properly meet their electricity needs. The goal of this project was to provide a wind or water flow profile from any area in the world and output a corresponding amount of power that would be expected from a small-scale wind or hydro generator. Due to difficulties with the microcontroller and incorrect sizing of components, this …

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 …

Flexible Custom Electric Skateboard, Caleb Adam Kelsay

Electrical Engineering

At Cal Poly traveling long distances only accessible by foot such as across campus or from the car park to class can be tiring and time-consuming. While not physically demanding, the trek consumes time in our tight college life schedule. To improve our time efficiency this project provides a relatively lightweight, powered solution to quickly and effectively travel long distances while maintaining full control and safety even on hills, a current limitation of traditional skateboards.

This electric skateboard includes the battery capacity to travel all around campus on a single charge with a compact and flexible skateboard design that provides …

Dc-To-Dc Buck Converter, Kyle Christopher Roman

Electrical Engineering

The growth of sustainable energy requires many components to work in harmony creating one efficient and effective system. Sustainable energy generation that produces a DC current varying in voltage requires a subsystem to convert voltage to a practical and usable value. The DC to DC Buck converter converts high DC solar generated voltage to a 12V output. This Modular -Level power electronic (MLPE) device performs as a solar charge controller for small lithium ion batteries. Fluctuating voltage levels generated by Photovoltaic cells makes the solar controller a critical part of the solar system. Regulating the DC voltage allows safe and …

Hybrid Water Pump, Dylan W. Grant, Wei Chen Yeh

Electrical Engineering

This project seeks to use multiple sources to power a water pump. We will design a system which will combine inputs from solar and wind energy production to ensure the pump will have enough power to run. This will create a system powered by clean energy and will be self-sustained once completed. This will theoretically create a more sustainable source of power for the pump than only one of the sources. Because the power sources don’t require outside inputs (aside from sun and wind), the pump can be placed in a remote area. This could be very helpful in developing …

Dc House Energy Management System, Zachary L. Eldredge, Zoe M. Hay

Electrical Engineering

In this work, a previously completed proof of concept for an Energy Management System (EMS) for the DC House project has been revised and re-implemented. The implemented design changes will improve the performance and reproducibility of the system. This new design of the EMS replaces the two-separate buck and boost DC-DC converters with a single bidirectional DC-DC converter to reduce components and improve efficiency. Analysis of the bidirectional DC-DC converter shows high efficiency especially at larger load currents. The code of the previous work was updated for smoother operation as well as to accommodate an LCD capable of displaying more …

Automatic Standby Power-Saving Power Strip, Trung Nguyen

Electrical Engineering

The Standby Power Saving Power Strip improves on common power strip functionality. The project reduces the power loss from most electrical devices’ standby power mode, while retaining the convenience of leaving the devices plugged-in. The surge protector automatically recognizes when the plugged-in devices enter standby power mode. Then, it shuts off power to that device and automatically provides power back to the plugged-in devices, when turned on.

Lab-Scale Circuit Breaker Module For Power System Laboratories, Amanda Barley, Allen C. Scozzari, Joshua E. Chung

Electrical Engineering

In this project, a circuit breaker that can simulate different types of power system faults is redesigned, constructed, and tested. They will then be implemented in power systems laboratory courses at Cal Poly. The project’s goal is to improve a previous circuit breaker design to help students better visualize how faults affect power systems in the real world. Two main improvements are made to the previous circuit breaker design. The first improvement is to power the breaker with a typical wall outlet adapter instead of the DC source from the Cal Poly power systems laboratory test benches. This lets the …

Dual Input Microinverter For Tandem Cells, Forrest M. Lipske, Daniel A. Dich-Dang

Electrical Engineering

For every solar panel, there is an inverter which transforms the harvested DC electricity into AC electricity so that it can connect to the grid and power household appliances. In this project, we examined a tandem solar cell being designed by Iris Photovoltaics which has two layers with two distinct outputs, and we explored several solutions to create a microinverter which can handle dual inputs from the tandem PV and combine them into a single AC output. To examine the viability of such a microinverter, we designed and simulated the DC-DC combination portion of the specialized dual input microinverter, resulting …

Solar Powered Electric Vehicle Charger, Jessica A. Bombardier Shaw, Andrew F. Moradpour

Electrical Engineering

This project will look into how to create an efficiently-operated solar powered electric vehicle charger. The solar panel will harvest energy from the sun that will be stored a battery pack to be readily available to charge an electric vehicle. These stations could be commercialized to be located along a highway, or personalized for a in-house installation.

Student Experimental Farm Smart Pathway Lighting System, Emily A. Whitaker, Vineal S. Singh, Edith Rodriguez

Electrical Engineering

This project works together with the Student Experimental Farm (SEF) and the DC House in order to install a smart lighting pathway system. This system will run off of DC power supplied by the solar panels connected to the DC House. This project tested and explored the group’s abilities to design and implement a full system run off of 48V DC. By installing this system it will greatly improve the ease for students to work at the SEF beyond daylight hours. The system will allow continuous dull lighting and will switch to full brightness once a person is detected. This …

Solar Roller - Solar Powered Usb Charging Station, Aaron Bartfeld, Tanner Mjelde, Kaylan Naicker

Electrical Engineering

As the necessity for renewable energy increases, solar power becomes more and more prevalent. At the same time, as technology increases, the necessity for charging one’s electronic devices also increases. The Solar Roller merges solar energy with the ability to charge one's electronic device in one compact cart. The Solar Roller is a solar-powered USB charging station that allows people of all backgrounds to develop a better understanding of alternative fuels, while charging their USB device. It has a touch screen display that provides voltage levels of the battery as well as a TV that displays solar powered information. The …

Microgrid Protection Student Laboratory, Ian Hellman-Wylie, Joey Navarro

Electrical Engineering

To better prepare students for careers in the electric power industry, specifically in the discipline of power system protection, the Electrical Engineering Department at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo proposed an initiative calling for the creation of new laboratory curriculum that uses microprocessor-based relays to give students hands-on experience in the application of protection theory. This report describes the creation of a system that meets this need by providing a laboratory-scale power system that demonstrates the use of common protective relays and protection schemes. This system provides a platform for laboratory coursework using protective relays for transmission line, transformer, and …