A Practical Course for Teaching Electric Machines with Renewable Energy Sources

摘要

Courses in electric machines are suffering from lack of student interest, leading to their reduction and even cancellation in many universities. One of the reasons for this lack of interest is the way electric machines introduced to undergraduate students. Some methods adopt the use of software packages that can be used to emulate electric machines; however these packages do not assist students in learning the experimental aspects of electric machines. Other methods use very tiny machines in teaching the subject and this does not cover the true behavior of medium to large electric machines.At The London College a modern electric machine laboratory which consists of Electrical Machine Trainers `EMT' was recently developed with integrated experiments in renewable energy sources for undergraduate students.The experiments are set to get the students familiar with and to understand the principles of operation of rotating electric machines, their classification and performance characteristics. The lab and associated courses also cover the concept of renewable energy machines (including the DC, induction and synchronous types for renewable energy harvesting).In developing the lab and associated courses, the authors came across many challenges and opportunities that they believe will be of interest to the electric power academic community in the UK and abroad. One of the challenges was to have a fresh look at what topics are covered and how they are covered in traditional electric machine courses and how to relate such topics to modern renewable energy electric machines.The full paper will give detailed breakdown of teaching electric machines with renewable energy sources to both undergraduate and postgraduate students together with recommended set of practical experiments.