News
Nov. 1, 2022 -- Our Paper on Wind-Solar Hybrid Renewable Energy Systems is Ranked as the Most Popular Paper in IEEE Open Journal of the IES
Nov. 1, 2022 -- Our recently published paper on wind-solar hybrid renewable power systems has been ranked as the most popular paper in IEEE Open Journal of the Industrial Electronics Society. The paper was led by Dr. Pranoy Roy, who has graduated recently from UK AMPERE Lab and joined Eaton Research Labs as a Lead Engineer, and other co-authors include: Dr. JiangBiao He, Director of AMPERE Lab, Dr. Tiefu Zhao, Associated Professor in Electrical Engineering at University of North Carolina at Charlotte, and Dr. Yash Singh from Eaton Research Labs. More information about this paper is provided as follows, which can be accessed in IEEE Xplore.
P. Roy, J. He, T. Zhao and Y. V. Singh, "Recent Advances of Wind-Solar Hybrid Renewable Energy Systems for Power Generation: A Review," in IEEE Open Journal of the Industrial Electronics Society, vol. 3, pp. 81-104, 2022, doi: 10.1109/OJIES.2022.3144093.
Access link: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/topAccessedArticles.jsp?punumber=8782706
Oct 10, 2022 -- AMPERE Researchers Presented Project Achievements in ECCE-2022 and IAS Annual Meeting in Detroit, MI
Oct. 10, 2022 -- AMPERE researchers presented recent project achievements in 2022 IEEE Energy Conversion Congress and Expo (ECCE-2022) and IAS Annual Meeting (IASAM), which were co-hosted in Detroit, MI, on Oct. 9-13, 2022. These projects have been sponsored by DOE ARPA-E, GE Research, National Science Foundation (NSF), NASA, and the Department of Education. The following topics were presented during ECCE-2022 and IASAM:
[1] Benjamin Luckett and JiangBiao He, "Reliability-Oriented Multi-Objective Design Optimization of Electric Aircraft Propulsion Drives," 2022 IEEE Energy Conversion Congress and Expo (ECCE-2022), Oct. 13, 2022.
[2] Pranoy Roy, Yuan Liao, and JiangBiao He, "Energy Storage for Hourly Dispatching Utility-Scale Solar Power Using HOMER Pro - A Cost Investigation," 2022 IEEE Energy Conversion Congress and Expo (ECCE-2022), Oct. 11, 2022.
[3] Reza Ilka, JiangBiao He, Yin Weijun, Jose E. Contreras, and Carlos G. Cavazos, "Multi-Physics Modeling and Simulation of Oil-Immersed Power Transformers Based on 3D Finite Element Analysis and Finite Volume Method," 2022 IAS Annual Meeting, Oct. 12, 2022.
Additionally, Dr. JiangBiao He was invited and presented the following two special session topics during ECCE-2022, together with experts from industries, national labs, federal government agencies, and academia.
[4] Special Session 14: Advanced Power Electronics and Drives for Commercial Vehicle Electrifications
[5] Special Session 16: Towards Enhancing the Resiliency of Grid-Interactive Inverters
Aug. 26, 2022 -- Congrats to Pranoy Roy on Passing the Ph.D. Dissertation Defense
Aug. 26, 2022 -- Congratulations to our Ph.D. candidate Pranoy Roy on passing the dissertation defense! Pranoy's research during his Ph.D. studies has been focusing on the hourly dispatching wind-solar hybrid power system with battery-supercapacitor hybrid energy storage. Some of his dissertation work has been published in IEEE journals, as listed below. The dissertation online access link will be shared to the public once it is published.
After the Ph.D. graduation, Pranoy will join Eaton Research Labs, Southfield, Michigan, as a Lead Engineer.
[1] P. Roy, Y. Liao and J. He, "Economic Dispatch for Grid-Connected Wind Power with Battery-Supercapacitor Hybrid Energy Storage System,", accepted by IEEE Transactions on Industry Applications, Aug. 2022.
[2] P. Roy, J. He, T. Zhao and Y. V. Singh, "Recent Advances of Wind-Solar Hybrid Renewable Energy Systems for Power Generation: A Review," IEEE Open Journal of the Industrial Electronics Society, vol. 3, pp. 81-104, 2022.
[3] P. Roy, J. He and Y. Liao, "Cost Minimization of Battery-Supercapacitor Hybrid Energy Storage for Hourly Dispatching Wind-Solar Hybrid Power System," IEEE Access, vol. 8, pp. 210099-210115, 2020.
Aug. 22, 2022 -- NSF Awarded Project on Autonomous Fault-Tolerant Redundant Robotic Arms
Aug. 22, 2022 -- A new project entitled "Autonomous Fault-Tolerant Operation of Redundant Robotic Arms", was awarded recently by NSF. Dr. Biyun Xie and Dr. JiangBiao He, both from UK ECE, will serve as the PI and Co-PI, respectively, to lead this 3-year project.
Hazardous environments with extreme temperature, humidity, radiation, etc. escalate the potential risk of hardware failures of robot joint motors and drives. Unfortunately, in unstructured, remote and dangerous environments, such as space exploration, nuclear waste remediation, and disaster rescue, not only are failures more likely to occur, but also it is impossible to perform routine maintenance for these robots after a failure occurs. Besides the above situations, failures occurred in safety-critical robotic applications, could also lead to serious consequences or accidents. Therefore, this project will develop autonomous fault-tolerant and fail-active strategies for redundant robot arms based on predicted and identified joint faults, which will dramatically improve the reliability and robustness of redundant robot arms.
Aug. 15, 2020 -- Welcome New Team Members Lulu Wei and Farzad Y. Notash!
Aug. 15, 2020 -- Welcome new team members Lulu Wei and Farzad Y. Notash! Both are PhD students and research assistants working at the AMPERE Lab.
Lulu previously worked as an R&D engineer at the BMW R&D Center and obtained her master degree in automotive engineering from Jilin University, China. Her research will focus on the development of high-performance motor-drive and power electronic systems for transportation electrification applications.
Before joined AMPERE Lab, Farzad worked as a motor design specialist in industry after obtaining his M.S. degree in Power Electronics and Electric Machines at the University of Tabriz, Iran. His research will focus on the designs and controls of advanced power electronics and motor-drive systems
May 15, 2022 -- Congrats to Trevor Arvin on Passing the M.S. Thesis Defense and Joining GE Aviation
May 20, 2022 -- Congratulations to Trevor Arvin on passing the M.S. thesis defense and joining GE Aviation as a power electronics engineer. Trevor joined the AMPERE Lab in Summer 2019, and has been focusing on the development of novel solid-state DC circuit breakers for medium-voltage DC power systems under the supervision of Dr. JiangBiao He. The projects were sponsored by DOE ARPA-E Breaker program (Lead Org: Marquette University) and the Schneider Electric URF through the UK ECE. After the graduation this month with a M.S. E.E degree, Trevor will join GE Aviation and work on power electronics systems for electric aircraft.
May 2, 2022 -- TVA Project Studying Impacts of Increasing Electric Vehicles on Distribution Power Grid
May 2, 2020 -- A new project sponsored by Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), has kicked off recently to study the impacts of increasing electric vehicles charging/discharging on distribution power grid. In this project, we will work closely with TVA, the largest government-owned electricity provider in U.S., Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), and West KY Rural Electric Cooperative Corporation. Dr. Yuan Liao serves as the PI of this project, Dr. JiangBiao He and Dr. Aaron Cramer serve as the Co-PIs.
April 12, 2022 -- 3-Year Project Awarded by ONR on WBG Machine-Drive Systems for Electric Propulsion
April 12, 2022 -- A 3-year project has been awarded recently by ONR to develop an advanced integrated solution for machine-drive electric propulsion systems, aiming to improve the system reliability in safety-critical applications. Dr. He serves as the PI to lead this project.
The emerging wide bandgap (WBG) semiconductor switches have been increasingly utilized in electric propulsion drives over the past few years, in order to enhance energy efficiency and power density of propulsion drivetrains. However, the fast switching speed of the WBG switches also induces notable reflected voltage stress on the stator windings and high-frequency current in the bearing of the machines, resulting in premature aging or failures in propulsion machines (see Dr. He's tutorial in IEEE IEMDC-2019 for more details). This has become a pressing concern for safety-critical applications such as electric ships or electric aircraft, particularly for the medium-voltage high-power propulsion systems in these applications. In this project, Dr. He's team will develop an advanced integrated solution to address such challenges and improve the propulsion system reliability.
Feb 2, 2022 -- A Review Paper on "Wind+Solar" Hybrid Power Generation Published in IEEE Journal
Feb 2, 2022 -- A comprehensive review paper on "Wind + Solar" hybrid power generation was recently published in IEEE Open Journal of the Industrial Electronics Society, co-authored by Ph.D. candidate, Pranoy Roy, Prof. JiangBiao He, Prof. Tiefu Zhao at UNC Charlotte, and Dr. Yash Singh at Eaton Research Lab. This paper presents a thorough review and analysis of the state of the art (147 bibliographies) on the emerging topic of wind-solar hybrid renewable energy systems, which is a promising technology promoted by U.S. DOE and many renewable energy industries to solve power intermittent issues, enhance power system stability, and reduce the capacity requirement of energy storage components.
More details are shown in the full paper available in IEEE Xplore: P. Roy, J. He, T. Zhao and Y. V. Singh, "Recent Advances of Wind-Solar Hybrid Renewable Energy Systems for Power Generation: A Review," IEEE Open Journal of the Industrial Electronics Society, vol. 3, pp. 81-104, 2022.
Jan 25, 2022 -- 5-Year NASA Project on Hybrid-Electric Aircraft Development
Jan 25, 2022 -- NASA has recently selected 4 teams of university faculty and students to participate in the agency’s University Leadership Initiative (ULI) with a research focus on sustainable aviation. The teams will spend up to five years on the proposed project, exploring novel ideas, including elimination of emissions and autonomy research in support of advanced air mobility. The full announcement is available as the NASA ULI Release 21-176.
ULI gives the academic community an opportunity to contribute to NASA’s aeronautical research and provide students with valuable experience in solving real-world technical challenges. “Aviation of the future has to be climate friendly to keep the world flying, and a great way to do that is to allow tomorrow’s top minds to begin making contributions to these goals while still in school,” said Koushik Datta, ULI project manager.
Four large multi-disciplinary teams have been selected nationwide. The one including the University of Kentucky (UK) is led by Florida State University and comprises Florida A&M University, State University of New York at Buffalo, and Georgia Tech. The industrial partners include Raytheon, Boeing, and Advanced Magnet Lab. The UK project will be led by PI Dr. JiangBiao He, and Co-PI Dr. Dan M. Ionel, both with UK ECE and PEIK, to develop high-performance electric propulsion motor-drive systems.
AMPERE Lab has been intensively working on aircraft electrifications over the past years, with more than 20 technical articles published on this topic in prestigious journals and conferences. The lab has been developing different critical aircraft power components and systems, including power converters, motor drives, DC circuit breakers, and propulsion drivetrain optimization.
