Electrical Engineering Major Project Topic for Final Year Students

MAGLEV Windmill - Design and Model

Humans have invented thousands of machines and appliances that utilize energy to make the daily works easier, for instance to heat our house, to get ourselves from place to place. Some of this machines use electricity, while others, like automobiles use the energy stored in gasoline. Much of the energy supply comes from coal, oil, natural gas, or radioactive element. In fact, all these natural resource deposits took millions of years to form. They are considered non-renewable which means once they are removed from the ground, they are not immediately replaced within the human timescale.

This current issue is frequently discussed at the level of whole world in order to look for a solution. Nowadays, we will ultimately need to search for renewable or virtually inexhaustible energy for the human development to continue. Renewable energy is defined as the energy generated by the natural resources such as wind, sun light, water which are quickly replace itself and is usually in never ending supply. The exploration of renewable energy is the only approach to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels. Among those renewable energy resources, wind energy is the only resource that will be concerned in this paper. Wind energy was first harvested centuries ago, when early windmills were used to power millstones, pumps, and forges. More recently, the wind is harnessed by using a special collector, called wind turbine to produce a clean, safe source of electricity.

This project focuses on the utilization of wind energy as a renewable source. Wind power, as an alternative to fossil fuels, is plentiful, renewable, widely distributed, clean, produces no gas emissions during operation and uses little land. Any effects on the environment are generally less problematic than those from other power sources. As of 2011, Denmark is generating more than a quarter of its electricity, and 83 countries around the world are using wind power on a commercial basis. In 2010 wind energy production was over 2.5% of total worldwide electricity usage, and growing rapidly at more than 25% per annum. The monetary cost per unit of energy produced is similar to the cost for new coal and natural gas installations. The development of wind power in India began in the 1990s, and has significantly increased in the last few years. India has the fifth largest installed wind power capacity in the world. In 2009-10 India's growth rate was highest among the other top four countries. In India wind capacity is about 6% of total installed power capacity and it continues to grow with the facilitation of new wind projects.

Various designs have been proposed in order to create a high efficient wind turbine which able to generate maximum electric power. They may either the design of shapes of the turbine blades, the axis of rotation, and other useful modification. Recently, an advance technique, Magnetic Levitation (Maglev) is incorporated into turbine system in order to fulfill the needs of those energy industries. The aim of this major qualifying project is to design and implement a magnetically levitated vertical axis wind turbine system. Our choice for this model is to showcase its efficiency in varying wind conditions as compared to the traditional horizontal axis wind turbine and contribute to its steady growing popularity for the purpose of mass utilization in the near future as a reliable source of power generation.

Unlike the traditional horizontal axis wind turbine, this design is levitated via maglev (magnetic levitation) vertically on a rotor shaft. Maglev phenomenon operates on the repulsion characteristics of permanent magnets. This technology has been predominantly utilized in the rail industry in the Far East to provide very fast and reliable transportation on maglev trains and with on-going research its popularity is increasingly attaining new heights. Using a pair of permanent magnets like neodymium magnets and substantial support magnetic levitation can easily be experienced. By placing two magnets on top of each other with like polarities facing each other, the magnetic repulsion will be strong enough to keep both magnets at a distance away from each other. The force created as a result of this repulsion can be used for suspension purposes and is strong enough to balance the weight of an object depending on the threshold of the magnets. In this project, we expect to implement this technology for the purpose of achieving vertical orientation with our rotors as well as the axial flux generator. The basic understanding of a generator is that it converts mechanical energy to electrical energy. Generators are utilized extensively in various applications and for the most part have similarities that exist between these applications. However the few differences present is what really distinguishes a system operating on an AC motor from another on the same principle of operation and likewise with DC motors.

With the axial flux generator design, its operability is based on permanent magnet alternators where the concept of magnets and magnetic fields are the dominant factors in this form of generator functioning. These generators have air gap surface perpendicular to the rotating axis and the air gap generates magnetic fluxes parallel to the axis. This maglev technology, which will be looked at in great detail, serves as an efficient replacement for ball bearings used on the conventional wind turbine and is usually implemented with permanent magnets. This levitation will be used between the rotating shaft of the turbine blades and the base of the whole wind turbine system. With the appropriate mechanisms in place, we expect to use enough wind for power generation by way of an axial flux generator built from permanent magnets and copper coils. The arrangement of the magnets will cultivate an effective magnetic field and the copper coils will facilitate voltage capture due to the changing magnetic field. This system can operate under low (as low as 1.5m/s) and high wind speed (exceeding 40m/s) condition. From the study, the generation capacity of maglev wind turbine is 20% over conventional wind turbines and decrease operational costs by 50%.This make the efficiency of the system become higher than the conventional wind turbine.

Hybrid Solar Wind Charger

Hybrid Solar Wind Charger 66 Votes

The commonly used Uninterrupted Power Supply systems take its power directly from the supply mains and consumes much higher energy for its functioning. Considering the energy availability crisis and higher living cost, it is necessary to find an alternative power source for such a system. Here, we propose a system to design a UPS which will utilize the everlasting solar and wind power, thereby checking the energy crisis to a certain limit and is termed as “Hybrid Solar Wind Charger”.

Since hybrid systems include both solar and wind power, they allow the power user to benefit from the advantages provided of both forms of energy. Obviously, solar panels don’t provide power during the night, but that’s when the wind usually picks up and conversely, on the longest, hottest days of days of summer, the wind often doesn't blow, but the sun is at its strongest great for solar power. The wind is more likely to blow during the cold, short days of winter when the sun is at its weakest. A purely solar power solution for general lighting load is very expensive as far as initial investment is concerned. Also, due to frequent power failure, a regular battery backup UPS/INVERTER barely gets time to charge the battery from mains. The hybrid version combines solar energy, wind energy and mains utility to give an excellent solution by providing the best of both worlds. While proposing this project of designing a hybrid charger, the following data must be taken into account.

Although fossil fuels have led us to economic prosperity, the extensive use has caused a substantial reduction of fossil fuels. Therefore, the solar energy, as one of the green energy resources, has become an important alternative for the future. It can be considered to use the parallel loaded resonant converter with the feature of the soft switching technique in the circuits of the solar storage battery charger. To avoid the damage of the battery charger due to the variation of the output current of the solar PV panels, a closed-loop boost converter between the solar PV panel and the battery charger was designed to stabilize the output current of the solar PV panel. By designing the characteristic impedance of the resonant tank, the charging current of the storage battery can be calculated and then the charging time for the storage battery can further be estimated.

By properly designing the circuit parameters, the parallel loaded resonant converter can be operated in the continuous current conduction mode and the switch can be switched for conduction at zero voltage. Such experimental results verified the correctness of the theoretic estimation for the proposed battery charger circuit. The average charging efficiency of the battery charger can be up to 88.7%. It is estimated that about 80% of all photovoltaic (PV) modules are used in stand-alone applications. Continuous power is obtained from PV systems by using a storage buffer, typically in the form of a lead acid battery. Batteries used in PV applications have different performance characteristics compared with batteries used in more traditional applications. In PV applications, lead acid batteries do not reach the cycle of lead acid batteries used in other applications such as uninterrupted power supplies or electric vehicles. The shortened battery life contributes significantly to the costs of a PV system. In some PV systems the battery accounts for more than 40% of the life cycle costs. An increase in the lifetime of the battery will result in improved reliability of the system and a significant reduction in operating costs. The life of a lead acid battery can be extended by avoiding critical operating conditions such as overcharge and deep discharge. So battery management system is necessary for such applications. The test results have shown that with proper setup, amp-hour counting charge control is more effective than conventional voltage regulated sub array shedding in returning the lead acid battery to a high state of charge.

We need an effective, robust and reliable solar battery charging algorithm for the widely used batteries; NiCd, NiMH, Lead-Acid and Lithium-Ion. The algorithm has the ability to charge the battery in the outdoor conditions, when the power is variable, and terminate charging when the battery is fully charged. The algorithm has two modes of operation; current mode and voltage mode. It can deal with the unexpected outdoor conditions, which may cause drops in the current, without falsely detecting the battery state of charge. A programmable power supply was programmed and the four battery types were charged to test the algorithm. A microprocessor controls the charging profile of the battery.

The estimation technique for solar battery charger based on lithium battery can also be considered while doing this project. The lithium battery is used for storing solar generated power. The solar battery charger requires solar cell voltage and current, battery voltage and current for controlling solar cell and battery status. But due to the unstable hazardous behavior of the lithium battery, it is required to have double protection function in the solar battery charger. A low-cost battery management relay controller, enabling near-optimum utilization of a solar photovoltaic array, connected to an off-the-shelf uninterruptible power supply, for daytime grid-connected operation can be studied for a higher efficient operation.

We have to design an intelligent battery charger controller just like in the case where solar energy can be used as an additional energy source for hybrid automobiles using gasoline and electricity for which the design idea is implemented and tested. The experimental project successfully demonstrates the feasibility of boosting a solar panel generated low voltage (24 V) energy source to a desired high voltage (150 V) for charging a battery pack. The result demonstrates that solar energy can be used as an additional clean energy source for hybrid automobiles.

The maximum power point tracking (MPPT) control for stand-alone solar power generation systems can be considered to do by means of fuzzy-model-based approach. In detail, we consider a dc/dc buck converter to regulate the output power of the photovoltaic panel array. First, the system is represented by the fuzzy model. Next, in order to reduce the number of measured signals, a fuzzy observer is developed for state feedback. Then, a fuzzy direct MPPT controller is proposed to achieve asymptotic MPPT control, in which the observer and controller gains are obtained by separately solving two sets of linear matrix inequalities. Different from the traditional MPPT approaches, the proposed fuzzy controller directly drives the system to the maximum power point without searching the maximum power point and measuring isolation. Furthermore, when considering disturbance and uncertainty, robust MPPT is guaranteed by advanced gain design. Therefore, the proposed method provides an easier implementation form under strict stability analysis. Finally, the control performance is shown from the numerical simulation and experimental results.

The study of solar radiation simulation by taking the daily distributions of solar radiation are presented for various clearness indexes, kt. Additionally, taking into account the studies about solar radiation, a photovoltaic array system and a DC/DC buck - boost converter are studied. Simulation of the whole system is presented focusing on DC/DC converter control strategy so that the system operates in maximum power point (MPP) and converter output voltage remains constant. Incremental conductance algorithm is used for maximum power point tracker (MPPT) implementation. A simplest method for controlling duty cycle D and photovoltaic array voltage by using a new variable (d = D/1-D) is proposed and the simulation results are shown and analyzed. For the implementation of this system, the dsPIC30F2010 Microchip, microcontroller can be programmed to provide pulses to the semiconductor element of the DC-DC converter in order to track the Maximum Power Point (MPP) of the photovoltaic array.

The term "temperature coefficient" has been applied to several different photovoltaic performance parameters, including voltage, current and power. The procedures for measuring the coefficient(s) for modules and arrays are not yet standardized and systematic influences are common in the test methods used to measure them. There are also misconceptions regarding their application. Yet, temperature coefficients, however obtained, play an important role in PV power system design and sizing, where often the worst case operating condition dictates the array size. Therefore effective methods is to be found for determining temperature coefficients for cells, modules and arrays; identifies sources of systematic errors in measurements; gives typical measured values for modules and provides guidance for their application in system engineering.

The studies have shown the advantages of the "solar-Diesel" hybrid systems compared to other models of fuel savers for telecommunication stations distant from commercial power lines. With a much smaller initial investment, practically the same reliability can be obtained as with 100 percent solar solutions. The idea is to put to use all the available energy of the sun with fewer solar panels, which may be called "Total Solar Energy System". Of course, it is necessary to maintain within the limits of a reliable operation the minimum state of charge of the battery. In practice this can be achieved by the use of a battery charger (Diesel-group or other) and a control system. The result can be used to make the project of hybrid solar systems. The formulas permit us to calculate, for a given site and system, all operational characteristics such as: - state of charge of the battery at the end of each month - monthly number of operation and operating time of the charging group - economy in fuel compared to 100% Diesel system Practical data and results in Brazil have proved the theory.

Hence, by means of this project we aim for the better utilization of solar energy for delivering steady supply to the loads and meet the energy crisis to a great extent. This will help in the reduction of the electricity bill thereby resulting in the lesser cost of electricity generation per unit.

Unified Power Quality Conditioner

Electrical Project on Unified power quality conditioner (UPQC). UPQC is one of the best custom power device used to compensate both source and load side problems. It consists of shunt and series converters connected back to back to a common dc link. A UPQC that combines the operations of DSTATCOM (Distribution Static Compensator) & DVR (Dynamic Voltage Regulator)

Different Power Quality Issues are

Voltage sags - Happens when there is reduction in rms voltage( 10 and 90 percent of nominal voltage for one half cycle to one minute). Voltage Sag can be caused by short circuit, starting of electric motors or overload.
Voltage Swells - Is a short term problem during which there is a reduction in the RMS voltage magnitude. Sometimes sags can adversly affect equipment performance. Sags can be caused by switching loads, voltage drop caused by long runs of wire, poor wiring and overloaded branch circuits.
Voltage unbalance - Unbalanced voltages usually occur because of variations in the load. When the load on one or more of the phases is different than the others, unbalanced voltages will appear. This is caused by different impedance's, or type and value of loading on each phase.
Flicker - In a weak distribution system, when heavy loads are periodically turned on and off, flicker occurs . If the distribution system’s short circuit capacity is not large enough, voltage fluctuations will occur. This can impact sensitive electronic equipment's very badly
Reactive currents - Can cause overloading effects on the line, circuit breakers, transformers, relays and insulation's
Current harmonics - Due to non linear electric loads, certain electric voltages and currents that appear on the electric power system.

Power Quality Solutions

Conventional Method

Tuned Filters - Filter contains a variable inductor which consists of main winding, auxiliary windings and switching circuitry along with each auxiliary winding. Auxiliary windings are arranged in such a way that, they act as inductive series with respect to the main winding. The switching circuitry is used to selectively connect the auxiliary windings in electrical series with the main winding, so allowing the inductance of the inductor to be varied.

Upcoming Solutions –Custom Power devices

Shunt Active Filters
Dynamic Voltage Restorer (DVR)
Unified Power Quality Controller (UPQC)

Shunt Active Filter

An ideal shunt compensator can be considered as a voltage source, controlled in magnitude and phase angle, with the same frequency of the system to which it is connected. Compensates Reactive current and Harmonic current

UPQC can mitigate Voltage sag, swell and Unbalance. UPQC can supply VAR to load. UPQC isolates the load current harmonics from flowing to the utility. It maintains unity input power factor at all conditions. Fast Dynamic response.

Please go through the attached Electrical project Report for more info

Speed Control Of Stepper Motor By Using UCN5804B Translator

In 1960’s and 1970’s motors were controlled by means of hardwired control which uses gears, levers and other basic mechanical devices. The primary negative aspect of mechanical control was that reliability was in contrast to the maintenance costs associated with keeping these panels operating which were extremely high. A second major factor was the time, expense and labor required when a change in control needs dedicated a control panel modification. Depending on application, changing the speed of motor using hardwired control is tedious because hardwired control involves both manual and mechanical operation i.e. changing the terminals etc. To overcome the drawbacks of hardwired control several modern techniques had been developed. Among them a very easiest technique to control the stepper motor speed control by using UCN5804B translator. With this technique almost endless variety of motion systems can be controlled. Our project deals with speed control of stepper Motor through UCN5804B translator. Owing easy understandable and more efficient and performance. We have done project on speed Control.

This project allows you to control the speed, direction, and step size of a unipolar four phase stepper motor. The controller is capable of handling motor winding currents of up to 1.25 amps per phase and it operates from a single supply voltage of 6-30 volts DC.A unique feature of this project is that the circuit can operate in either remote mode or stand-alone mode. In the stand-alone mode, an on-board pulse generator and a four-position DIP switch allows you to demonstrate all of the functions without any additional connections. This mode is perfect for demonstrating basic stepper motor control principles. The circuit even has LEDs that show the energized phases for each step. In remote mode, all motor functions can be interfaced to external logic or a microcontroller. This allows the controller to be incorporated into a robot, an X-Y plotter, or any motion control project.

Rajiv Gandhi Proudyogiki Vishwavidyalaya

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