NCREPT Spring 2009 Newsletter Released

Greetings to the members and supporters of the National Center for Reliable Power Transmission! This is an exciting time. As we are wrapping up the spring semester, I wanted to take time to acknowledge and thank you for your support of the center. We continue to make progress on bringing our systems fully on line with a redoubled focus on making the center ready for members and students to use as needed to test power electronic devices.

Work is underway to improve the safety, capability and flexibility of our equipment. Some of our equipment unit operations are still being brought online. In addition, infrastructure systems are being developed to make NCREPT the center of choice for power electronics test-ing in the future.
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NCREPT Center to Sponsor Carver REU Student

The National Center for Reliable Power Transmission will sponsor Andre’ Cook, a mechanical engineering freshman, as part of the Carver Program. Andre’s work will focus on strengthening the new center’s Personnel Safety Program.
Andre’s home is San Antonio, Texas, where he graduated in the top 10% of his class. He is an INROADS Scholar and a Silas Hunt Scholar. In addition, Andre’ has worked as a community volunteer in a San Antonio hospital and with Habitat for Humanity. Andre’s primary coach will be T.A. Walton, NCREPT Managing Director.

NCREPT Files Disclosure for Multilevel Inductorless Boost Inverter

Art Barnes, electrical engineering research assistant, and Juan Balda, electrical engineering professor, have produced an invention disclosure for a multilevel inductorless boost inverter with the university for marketing purposes. The multilevel inductorless boost inverter is a novel power converter topology that is used to produce a higher ac voltage from a single dc voltage source. This topology has potential applications in battery-based energy storage systems for interconnecting them to the power grid and electric propulsion when using battery voltages from 200 V to 400 V and the propulsion electric motor is rated from 600 V to 900 V.

The topology provides a number of benefits over existing solutions. It provides voltage sharing across switches, improves harmonic quality, eliminates the space, weight, and temperature limitations of magnetic components, and can operate over a wide range of load power factors. Additionally, it can be constructed in a modular fashion from off-the-shelf integrated power modules (IPM’s). The topology has been tested in simulation using Matlab/Simulink™ and its SimPowerSystems Simulink Toolbox. A single-phase dc-dc prototype is currently under construction using IPM’s with a TI digital signal processor (DSP) for control.

NCREPT Begins Testing

The facilities at NCREPT became operational and began testing power systems February 2, 2009. The first customer was The Switch, Hudson, New Hampshire. They will be testing, under IEEE 1547 and UL1741, the current unit and four more units for One Penn Plaza in New York City.

Solar energy way of the future

Solar energy is coming to Arkansas, Juan Carlos Balda, a University of Arkansas professor, told a group gathered for a Friends of the Library Lunch and Learn presentation.
This is the second year of the Lunch and Learn program. Balda's topic was alternative energy.
There are several types of alternative energy, he told the group. Besides solar there's wind, biomass, geothermal and hydroelectric. Arkansas already produces a significant amount of hydroelectric energy with dams like the one that created Beaver Lake.

NCREPT Welcomes its newly hired Managing Director

NCREPT is pleased to announce the hiring of Mr. T. A. Walton as its new Managing Director. Mr. Walton has had extensive prior experience working for Procter & Gamble in a variety of roles involving both account and personnel management. He will be coming to the UA on March 11. A University of Arkansas Alumnus, Mr. Walton has a bachelor’s and master’s in Chemical Engineering and was actively involved in numerous extra-curricular activities on campus as a student as well as after his graduation. In his new role as Managing Director, Mr. Walton will work with the other directors of NCREPT as part of the management team.

NCREPT Director Dr. Alan Mantooth named IEEE Fellow

We are very pleased to announce that Dr. Alan Mantooth is one of the 302 IEEE members who have been elevated to the grade of IEEE Fellow for his contributions to the modeling of power electronic devices. This is a very significant milestone for every successful researcher. The grade of Fellow recognizes unusual distinction in the profession and is conferred only by invitation of the Board of Directors upon a person of outstanding and extraordinary qualifications and experience in IEEE-designated fields, and who has made important individual contributions to one or more of these fields.

University's Electricity Center Receives $1 Million

The only thing that beats a brand-new 7,000-square-foot lab to research electric power is a brand-new lab and a million bucks in the bank. That's exactly what the National Center for Reliable Electric Power Transmission at the University of Arkansas found out Friday. The American Electric Power Foundation sweetened the building dedication ceremony by donating $1 million to support research at the center.
"This new addition will propel our program as we establish a world-class power electronics test facility for use by ourselves, other universities and businesses," said Alan Mantooth, the director of the center, in a news release. The lab can work with experimental electricity distribution systems of up to 6.5 megawatts.
The lab in the Engineering Research Center in south Fayetteville will serve as a training area for area electric company employees, and as a prototype center that can be shared by other universities, laboratories or private businesses. The lab already has partnership agreements with 18 private companies. Universities in Japan, England and Argentina, as well as the University of South Carolina, also are partners. (Click for full article)