Description

Power electronics in EV and Renewable energy was a beneficial webinar organized by IEEE Student Branch University of Ruhuna with the collaboration of Power and Energy Society (PES) the Student Branch University of Ruhuna. The webinar was focusing all the students in both the electrical, mechanical engineering departments and 1st-year students. This was held successfully on 04th December 2021 through the zoom platform with a participation of more than 90 participants around one and half hours. The theme of the webinar was Transition Power electronics in EV and renewable energy. The speaker of the webinar is Mr. Prashanth Atputhakumar who is currently working as the head of power electronics in Vega innovation and he has graduated from the Electronics and Telecommunication Engineering department of the University of Moratuwa. The moderator was Mr Sahan Ediriweera. Mr. Prashanth briefly discusses the vega electrical vehicle transition and how power electronics are applied to electric vehicles and renewable energy. At the end of the presentation, he talks about switching devices which are the basic part of power electronic devices and converters, invertors are briefly discussed. First, he discussed the main component of the vega supercar such as battery pack, motor controller, vehicle control unit, digital instrument clusters, and other power electronic controllers. And he discussed the power electronics system and power electronic converters. As an example, the motor controller is a dc to ac converter. And the onboard charger is ac to dc converter. And he explained about different modes of charging some are independent of the power grid that directly supplies from solar panels so they are purely zero carbon emission. Then he explained about renewable energy and more about solar and types of inverters such as string, center, battery, micro, power inverters, and the efficiency of micro inverters. Another interesting thing about hybrid invertors. Mainly hybrid invertors have batteries and solar panels. During the daytime using a solar panel battery was charged and after charging the battery power was supplied to the grid. And last he discussed switching devices and trends. And he explained timelines from mercury rectifiers to WBG technology. Finally, there was a discussion session to further understand as in future when we changed to our vehicle to an electric vehicle the demand was increased and manage demand using renewable energy. So this is another successful event for students who have a micro conception of their career. So that webinar was a good opportunity for everyone who was willing to have a successful career in the electrical and electronic engineering field.