Clean energy related research activity has rapidly increased over the past decade with global environmental challenges that is driving need for alternative energy sources. Research encompasses various aspects of energy sources such as solar, wind, geothermal along with new approaches to fusion and low energy nuclear reactions. There is also a sense of urgency in discovery and innovation as society looks up to scientific community to solve this grand engineering challenge. It will require basic and applied research that results into groundbreaking discoveries followed by advancement towards deployable solutions. This workshop will explore the recent advances in measurement, monitoring and control research for smart energy systems.

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Program 1 (9:30 10:00-15:00)

1. Energy Research: Empowering Accelerated Discovery and Innovation
   Dr. Ravi Marawar, National Instruments
2. Simulating power semiconductor devices using variable model levels
   Tsuyoshi Funaki, Osaka University, Japan
3. A power hardware-in-loop based testing bed for auxiliary active power control of wind power plants
   Dr. Jin Lin, Tsinghua University, China
4. Beginners challenge to develop experimental setup of network control of distributed generator
   Takeyoshi Kato, Nagoya University, Japan             
5. High performance computing and control for geophysics, smart grid, and LENR research
   Dr. Lothar Wenzel, National Instruments, U.S.A.   
   
   Program 2 (15:00 15:15-17:00)
   
   
6. Quanser-NI Workshop: Innovative Hands-on Techniques
   Dr. Tom Lee of University of Waterloo, Adjunct Professor, Systems Design Engineering
   Michel Lévis of Quanser Inc., M.A.Sc., Application Engineer

 

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Talk/Lecture 1: Energy Research: Empowering Accelerated Discovery and Innovation

National Instruments is a leading provider of measurement, control and automation tools that enable researchers to perform experimental research spanning solar, wind, fuel cell and other renewable sources of energy. The seamlessly integrated software and hardware accelerates discovery in basic research that is a foundation for innovative commercial applications. Presentation will give overview latest tools in the market with specific academic research examples demonstrating productivity improvements and development cost reductions.

Speaker: Dr. Ravi Marawar (National Instruments)
Short Biography:  Ravi Marawar (Ph D) is a Senior Program Manager in the Academic Marketing Group at National Instruments. Academic marketing team mission is to facilitate hands on engineering education and research using state of the art technology.  His team currently works with pioneering researchers in the areas of Wireless Communications, Renewable Energy and the Industrial Internet of Things. In the past he led NI efforts to create special academic products and resources, formed partner ecosystem with compatible devices and collaborated with education organizations worldwide to promote and disseminate hands on learning. He was involved in the formation and early establishment of the IUCEE organization.  He received his Ph D in Atomic and Molecular Physics from Rice University in 1992. He has been employed at National Instruments since 1996.

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Talk/Lecture 2: simulating power semiconductor devices using variable model levels

The characteristics of power device is different from ideal switch, especially when they are operated in fast and high frequency switching. Their behaviors in the operation of power conversion circuit is required to be estimated in simulation for designing circuit and converter control system. The model of power device and the model parameters are different in the level of simulation. The most simple requires only static current – voltage characteristics of power device. The dynamic model, which is practically used in circuit simulation, requires to identify parasitic capacitance and inductance components in the device to estimate transient behavior in switching operation. The measurement requires combination and cooperative operation of instruments, especially for high voltage power device. Examples of setups and integrated operation of measurement system for characterization of power device is introduced in this presentation.

Speaker: Tsuyoshi FUNAKI (Osaka University)
Short Biography: Tsuyoshi Funaki received the B.E. and M.E. degrees in electrical engineering and the Ph.D. degree all from Osaka University, Osaka, Japan. He joined Osaka University as an Research Associate in 1994 and became an Assistant Professor in 2001. In 2002, he joined Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan, as an Associate Professor. In 2008, he joined Osaka University, Osaka, Japan, as a Professor.

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Talk/Lecture 3: A power hardware-in-loop based testing bed for auxiliary active power control of wind power plants

Auxiliary active power control (AAPC) of wind power plants (WPP) has been an emerging subject of mod-ern power systems. However, there is currently lack of appropriate platform to test AAPC performances of an actual WPP. Under the background, this paper presents a testing bed for AAPC in both frequency regulation and damping control of WPP. The main novelty is that the platform is designed based on power hardware-in-loop (PHIL) technologies. PHIL technologies enable a physical WPP to integrate to a virtual real-time power system, which is simulated with StarSim software based on NI PXI platform. The technologies combine the advantages of software and hardware simulations. Based on the testing bed, this paper compares the frequency regulation and damping control performances of an aggregated wind farm integrated to an isolated system. The PHIL simulation results demonstrate the strength of the platform, which extends the flexibility of system configurations of software simulation to an actual physical WPP experiment.

Speaker: Dr. Jin Lin (Tsinghua University)
Short Biography: Dr. Jin Lin is now Assistant Professor in Department of Electrical Engineering, Tsinghua University. He obtained his Ph. D and Bachelor degree from Department of Electrical Engineering, Tsinghua University in 2012 and 2007 respectively. He was a Post Ph. D research fellow from 2012 to 2014 in the same department. He was honored as Excellent Doctoral Dissertation Award and Distinguished Post Ph. D by Tsinghua in 2014. He was a visiting researcher in Risø Sustainable Energy Laboratory, Denmark and National Renewable Energy Laboratory, US from 2009 to 2011. He has been granted as PI by National Scientific Foundation Council and 863 program of Ministry of Science and Technology. Currently his main research interests are on industrial micro grid, active distribution network, energy distribution network.

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Talk/Lecture 4: Beginners challenge to develop experimental setup of network control of distributed generator

The application of Internet of Things (IoT) to electric power system offers a range of possibilities for how electric utilities can shift from a centralized source to a distributed topology that can absorb different energy sources in a dynamic way. IoT can be used not only for monitoring various devices but also for controlling them. Distributed generators can be controlled through the internet, which contributes to improve the reliability of electric power system with high penetration distributed generators.

As a beginner user of monitoring and controlling devices of the National Instruments, we have just started to develop an experimental setup for controlling distributed generators through an internet. The objective of our challenge is to develop an experimental setup of virtual power system consisting of a number of distributed generators in different locations. In this workshop, I will briefly introduce our objective and current status of experimental setup developed in our laboratory.

Speaker: Takeyoshi KATO (Nagoya University)
Short Biography: Takeyoshi Kato became an assistant professor of Center for Integrated Research in Science and Engineering in 1996, an assistant professor in 2000 and an associate professor in 2005 of the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, and a professor of Institute of Materials and Systems for Sustainability in 2015, Nagoya University. His research interests include modeling/forecasting of electricity demand/renewable power output, control and planning of electric power system, integration of renewable energy with urban design, etc. Dr. Kato is a member of IEEE, IEE of Japan, Japan Society of Energy and Resources, Japan Solar Energy Society.

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Talk/Lecture 5: High performance computing and control for geophysics, smart grid, and LENR research

We report on three projects in the energy field. Two of them share another feature, large systems of FPGAs (Field Programmable Gate Arrays) are deployed to achieve the required performance. The first example is a 3D acoustic wave control system with 800 sensors and actuators with integrated real-time partial differential equation solvers that are executed using 400 FPGAs. Such a system is used to study geophysical phenomena. We also report on how very large power grid simulations can be conducted by an FPGA-centric architecture similar to the former one. In particular, real-time transient computations at rates of 1 MHz using many FPGSs are possible. These very fast simulations can be connected to slower (but still real-time) simulations of extensive bus-systems. We will briefly discuss an application in the field of LENR (Low Energy Nuclear Reaction).

Speaker: Dr. Lothar Wenzel (National Instruments, U.S.A.)
Short Biography:  Dr. Lothar Wenzel is Chief Software Architect at National Instruments in Austin, Texas.
Before coming to Austin he worked in Germany for a nuclear power plant in the field of turbine surveillance and for BASF on non-destructive testing projects. He received his Dr. rer.nat. in Mathematics, habilitation in Mathematics, and Master’s degree in Computer Science. His focus areas are large real-time systems based on FPGAs, numerical mathematics, control and simulation, image processing, and recently power grid simulations.

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Program 2

Talk/Lecture 6: Quanser-NI Workshop: Innovative Hands-on Techniques

The wind turbine is a clean energy technology that is being used effectively in many countries. Variable pitch wind turbines include multiple control systems to adjust the pitch of the blades to regular the speed of the rotor for optimal electrical energy production. The hands-on portion of the workshop introduces new development in hands-on learning about modeling and control systems for both academic and industry-relevant research. Quanser is a leading producer of high precision lab equipment with a special focus on control, mechatronics, and robotics. In this workshop, participants will use the innovative QUBE-Servo™ servo motor system, to learn about software tools, instrumentation, and different control system that relate to wind turbine technologies.

List of Presenters and short bios:
Dr. Tom Lee of University of Waterloo, Adjunct Professor, Systems Design Engineering
Dr. Lee is an Adjunct Professor of Systems Design Engineering at the University of Waterloo, Canada. He earned his Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering (Automation and Control) from the University of Waterloo. He is also a Chief Education Officer at Quanser. Dr. Lee’s specialization is in generalized system-level methodologies for physical system modeling and control. In the past, he has held senior positions with the mathematical software company Maplesoft, a subsidiary of Cybernet Systems, Japan. He also holds an adjunct appointment with Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of New Mexico.

Michel Lévis of Quanser Inc., M.A.Sc., Application Engineer
Michel Lévis is an Application Engineer at Quanser Inc. in Canada. Heearned his Bachelor’s degreein Electrical EngineeringatQueen’s Universityin Kington, Ontario and his Master’s degree in Control Systems at the University of Toronto. Over the last 12 year with Quanser, he has been involved in developing material for many Quanser electro-mechanical systems and has conducted many hands-on training and workshop sessions in different regions around the world, including SICE 2013.

Program Goals:

To provideanoverview of the latest hands-on techniques for teaching undergraduate and graduate students, as well as research.

Program Content and Major Topics:

1. Quanser-NI research Innovation [30 min]
• Clean energy applications: variable pitch wind turbine
• Using Quanser and NI equipment to learn the necessary skills for conducting research
• Case studies
2. QUBE-Servo System Presentation [15 min]
• NI LabVIEW and Quanser Rapid Control Prototyping (QRCP) Toolkit
• NI myRIO Data Acquisition device
• QUBE-Servo Hardware
• QUBE-Servo Courseware and Supplementary Material
3. Hands-onPortion – Instrumentation [30 min]
• Introduction to LabVIEW and QRCP Toolkit
• Building your own Virtual Instrument to interface to hardware sensors and motors
• Measuring sensors and driving DC motor
• Sensor and actuator calibration
4. Hand-on Portion – Control Design and Implementation [30 min]
• DC Motor Position Control (PD)
• Rotary Inverted Pendulum Balancing Control (State-Feedback)
• Pendulum Swing-Up Control (Nonlinear Energy-Based Control)
5. Closing Remarks and Q&A Session [15 min]

Intended Audience: Professors, undergraduate, and graduatestudents.

 

 

Tutorial/Workshop Co-Chairs
Eiichi Yoshida (AIST)
Mihoko Niitsuma (Chuo Univ.)
Program Chair
Tetsuo Kotoku, AIST, Japan