Interactive Power Electronics Tool for Undergraduate Laboratories and Research Purposes

This research proposes the use of hardware emulation for inverter plants for the first time. This results in a new low cost, safe and robust solution for teaching control strategies for power electronics inverter circuits, composed of a digital controller (DSP or FPGA) connected to the inverter “hardware emulation circuit”. The inverter dynamical behavior is emulated by cheap operational amplifiers circuits, in such way that the student can safely measure the inverter emulated currents/voltages. The hardware emulation is not beneficial only for educational purposes but can be used for scientific research, testing and fault diagnosis of inverter systems. Substantial part of the control software development and tests can be safely and comfortably done at an office desk, without the high costs, risks and safety measures required for manipulating a real scale inverter.