Faculty Workshop on Teaching of First Course on Power Electronics, Electric Drives and Power Systems Applications of Power Electronics; Arizona State University; January 2-4, 2003

Faculty Workshop on Teaching of First Course on Power Electronics, Electric Drives and Power Systems Applications of Power Electronics

It is proposed to organize a faculty workshop on 'Teaching of First Courses on Power Electronics and Electric Drives and Advanced Course on Power System Applications of Power Electronics' during January 2-4, 2003 at the Arizona State University, Tempe. This workshop is intended to promote teaching of power electronics and electric drives courses with the following objectives:

Provide the highest quality undergraduate and graduate education in this field.

Motivate and attract talented students.

Discuss up-to-date laboratories with digital control.

Facilitate teaching of these courses by EE faculty specializing in other fields.

Identify best practices and learn from the experiences at different universities.

The workshop will be organized jointly by Arizona State University and University of Minnesota. At University of Minnesota, as well as at ASU, restructuring of power electronics related courses is being actively pursued since 1994. Two NSF funded projects namely, 'Innovations in Power Engineering Education' in 1997 and 'DSP-Based Software-Reconfigurable Laboratory to Nationally Revitalize Electric Drives and Power Electronics Curricula' in 2000, provided a big impetus to these efforts at University of Minnesota. In January 3-5, 2002, a workshop was organized at the Arizona State University, Tempe, where the new methods of teaching first courses in Power Electronics and Electric Drives were presented and the newly developed hardware laboratory setups were demonstrated. This workshop was extremely successful with approximately 125 registrants from across the country.

In the proposed workshop in January 2003 at ASU, new significant developments in the undergraduate power electronics and electric drives laboratory setups will be demonstrated. Teaching methods developed and the improved lecture notes based on suggestions at the previous workshop will be presented. A poster session for interested faculty will be organized, where they will have an opportunity to describe their own efforts at improving the related curriculum. A panel session consisting of experts from government agencies and industry will be arranged to discuss challenges and opportunities in these fields.

Applications of power electronics in power systems, made possible by the advancements in power semiconductor devices, represent the new frontier in the field of power electronics. A course on this topic, which has important applications in electric power network efficiency and security, will be discussed at this proposed workshop.

As a part of the workshop proceedings, copies of poster presentations, complete lecture notes, lecture transparencies, and the simulation exercises discussed during the workshop will be distributed. Ample time will be provided to critique the course material and the laboratories developed through NSF funding. Ways of tightly coupling lecture material to simulations and hardware laboratory will be discussed. Plans to acquire laboratory equipment in a collaborative manner and to develop laboratory experiments will be discussed.