IFEC 2018 Competition Held Successfully at Tsinghua University
On 19 and 20 July, the final competition of the 2018 IEEE International Future Energy Challenge (IFEC 2018) was held at Tsinghua University, Beijing, China (Figure 1). This international competition was initiated by the IEEE and marks the highest level of student competitions in power electronics. IFEC 2018 was sponsored by the IEEE Power Electronics Society (PELS), IEEE Industry Application Society, IEEE Power & Energy Society, and Power Supply Manufacturer Association. This competition, started in 2001 by the IEEE and the U.S. Department of Energy, invites undergraduate and graduate students from around the world to work together on challenging power electronic topics. It aims to inspire creative thinking and cultivate elite future professionals in the field of power electronics. Participating teams are required to propose an innovative solution to a specific technical problem and build a prototype to verify their design. A grand prize and special awards are given based on the reviews from academic and industrial experts for the proposals and experimental tests for the prototypes.
IFEC 2018 was hosted by the Department of Electrical Engineering, Tsinghua University, with the topic of high-efficiency and high-density isolated bidirectional dc–dc converter for residential energy storage systems.
This event received support from the PELS Beijing Chapter, the China Electrotechnical society, the Tsinghua University Energy Internet Research Institute, and the State Key Laboratory of Control and Simulation of Power System and Generation Equipment. Industry sponsors for the competition included Diamond partner Chroma (Shenzhen) Corporation and Golden partner Mitsubishi Electric Corporation.
The test platform for the final competition was provided by Chroma (Shenzhen) Corporation. Prof. Zhengming Zhao from Tsinghua University served as the general chair of the competition. Dr. Kai Sun from Tsinghua University and Dr. Qiang Li from Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, served as the general cochairs. Prof. Yaow-Ming Chen from National Taiwan University, Taipei City, served as the steering committee chair. The judging panel for the final competition consisted of Prof. Philip Krein from UIUC (member of the National Academy of Engineering and an IEEE Fellow), Prof. Jih-sheng Lai from Virginia Tech (founding chair of IFEC and an IEEE Fellow), Prof. Braham Ferreira from Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands (past president of PELS and IEEE Fellow), Prof. Toshihisa Shimizu from Tokyo Metropolitan University (IEEE Fellow), Dr. Alpha Zhang from the Delta Group, and Dr. Dachong Gu from Unique Technical Services, LLC. Ten student teams from six countries and regions participated in the final competition.
After the exciting two-day competition in oral presentation and hardware testing, student teams from Xi’an Jiaotong University, Tsinghua University, and Beijing Jiaotong University won the Grand Prize Award, Outstanding Performance Award, and Innovation Award with US$10,000, US$5,000, and US$3,000 rewards, respectively. The University of Belgrade, National Taiwan University of Science and Technology, and The Ohio State University received the Educat ion a l Impact Award, Outstanding Technical Report Award, and Outstanding Presentation Award, respectively
In The Power-Conversion Business, It’s Who You Know
A six-year-old power play and its three-year-old sister startup are providing something truly unique on Long Island – a two-headed engineering enterprise with the ability to empower the powerless.
That could have many interpretations, but it takes a fairly literal spin at Unique Technical Services, a 2012 launch and member of Stony Brook University’s Advanced Energy Research and Technology Center, and Smithtown-based Unique Electric Solutions, that slightly younger sibling.
With a heavy (though not exclusive) focus on the transportation industries, UTS concentrates technologically on energy storage, control and power systems and other engineering challenges to “pretty much electrifying anything,” according to founder and General Manager Joseph Ambrosio.
“We basically repower anything that’s not electric and make it run on electricity,” noted Ambrosio, also UTS’s chief technology officer. “The skills required to do that are part of our core strengths, and we can apply these toolkits to electrify many different types of equipment.”
At UES, the focus is most certainly focused on transportation exclusively. The three-year-old spinoff, where Ambrosio serves as a managing member, concentrates on electric and hybrid vehicle conversions – turning traditional combustion-engine cars and trucks into less-greenhouse-gassy versions of their former selves.