Webinars

 

Upcoming Webinars - 

 

Wireless Charging for Autonomous Electrified Micro-mobility Devices:  A Real-world Solution for Smart Cities to be Pandemic-ready

Joint Webinar with IEEE Power Electronics Society
Presenter:  Dr. Sheldon Williamson, Ontario Tech University
Date:  Tuesday, June 30, 2020, 10:00am New York Time

Abstract: Driverless, autonomous electrified means of micro-mobility were already touted to bring progressive lifestyle changes in numerous aspects of civilization. Examples of highly touted solutions pre-COVID included: E-bikes, drones, large/medium-sized unmanned aerial vehicles, electric scooters, and electric skateboards, just to name a few. With the outbreak of the Novel Coronavirus pandemic, humankind around the world are desperately seeking rapid commercialization of smart autonomous micro-mobility solutions, especially to avoid human interface during the COVID-19 pandemic. It is clear that electrified autonomous means of micro-mobility will become an essential support for humans in fighting COVID-19, by satisfying essential services and needs, without the necessity for human contact or engagement, thus respecting social distancing guidelines. 

One of the key issues, however, with micro-mobility devices, is that their batteries do not last too long (in terms of distance on a single charge). Therefore, they have to be recharged ever so often, and this may take anywhere between 45-60 minutes (using fast charging rates). In addition, more often than not, micro-mobility based transportation have major cargo restrictions, whereby they just cannot afford to carry bulky battery packs. In general, e-micro-mobility uses electric motors that maintain speeds below 31 mph (50 km/h).

This seminar will present innovative solutions to these issues in the form of completely autonomous, weatherproof, wireless rapid recharging infrastructures. Wireless charging systems are capable of providing rapid recharge within ~2-3 minutes, making e-micro-mobility almost entirely autonomous and quite literally, allowing their on-board batteries to juice-up “on-the-move.” This presentation will cover the design, testing, and implementation of practically developed inductive power transfer (IPT), capacitive power transfer (CPT), and hybrid IPT/CPT charging solutions for future autonomous e-micro-mobility devices. Designs of IPT, CPT, and hybrid IPT-SPT couplers with power ranging between 500 Watts to 7.7 kW will be presented. The results derived from these designs will contribute specifically to the process of enhancement of wireless charging research for future emicro-mobility, as well as for e-transportation, in general. Alternatively, the lessons learned will, at the very least, facilitate the generation of new ideas.

Biography:

Sheldon S. Williamson (S’01–M’06–SM’13–F’20) received his Bachelor of  Engineering (B.E.) degree in Electrical Engineering with high distinction from the University of Mumbai, Mumbai, India, in 1999. He received the Masters of Science (M.S.) degree in 2002, and the Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) degree (with Honors) in 2006, both in Electrical Engineering, from the Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago, IL, specializing in automotive power electronics and motor drives, at the Grainger Power Electronics and Motor Drives Laboratory.  Currently, Dr. Williamson is a Professor at the Smart Transportation Electrification and Energy Research (STEER) group, within the Department of Electrical, Computer, and Software Engineering, at Ontario Tech University, in Oshawa, Ontario, Canada. He also holds the prestigious NSERC Canada Research Chair position in Electric Energy Storage Systems for Transportation Electrification. His main research interests include advanced power electronics and motor drives for transportation electrification, electric energy storage systems, and electric propulsion. Prof. Williamson is a Fellow of the IEEE.

 

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Conductive Charging of Electrified Vehicles:  Challenges and Opportunities

Joint Webinar with IEEE Power Electronics Society
Presenter:  Dr. Haoyu Wang, Shanghai Tech University
Date:  Wednesday, July 8, 2020, 8:00am New York Time

Abstract: The transportation sector consumes approximately 28% of the total energy consumption. The most prominent sustainable solution to profoundly reduce both oil consumption and greenhouse gas emissions lies in grid-enabled electric vehicles (EVs). These vehicles are propelled either partially or fully by electricity through energy storage systems such as electrochemical batteries, which need to be charged from the grid. One of the most important realities that will facilitate the adoption of grid-enabled plug-in EVs (PEVs) is the method by which these vehicles will be charged. Currently, conductive charging is the dominant charging technology in commercially available PEVs. 

In this webinar, I will give an extensive overview of the conductive charging technology of PEV from the perspective of a power electronics professional.  The background review covers the charging power levels, PEV charger architectures, charging profiles of Lithium-ion batteries, as well as the challenges and opportunities. Followed by is a comprehensive review of state-of-the-art emerging solutions to those technological challenges. The advanced topics include innovative circuit topologies, advanced control strategies, integrated architectures wide bandgap devices, and boosted power density with high switching frequency. Furthermore, I will give an introduction to our recent related research works. Finally, the webinar concludes with an outlook on future technology trends. 

Biography:

Dr. Haoyu Wang is an assistant professor and the director of Power Electronics And Renewable Energies Lab (PEARL) at Shanghai Tech University. Dr. Wang received his bachelor's degree in electrical engineering and distinguished honor degree in Mixed Class at Chu Kochen Honors College, from Zhejiang University in Hangzhou, China. He received his master's and Ph.D. degrees both in electrical engineering from the University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA. He joined the School of Information Science and Technology at ShanghaiTech University as a tenure-track assistant professor in September 2014. He received the Outstanding Bachelor's Thesis Award from Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China and the Distinguished Dissertation Fellowship from the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at the University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA. His research interests include power electronics, plug-in electric and hybrid electric vehicles, the applications of wide band-gap semiconductors, renewable energy harvesting, and power management integrated circuits. Dr. Wang is a Senior Member of IEEE and a Senior Member of China Power Supply Society. He serves as an Associate Editor of IEEE Transactions on Transportation Electrification, and an Associate Editor of CPSS Transactions on Power Electronics and Applications. He also serves as the Track Chair for IEEE Applied Power Electronics Conference and Exposition (APEC).

 

 

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All-Electric Propulsion for Heavy-Duty Urban Aerial Vehicles 

Presenter:  Dr. Yue Cao, Oregon State University
Date:  Wednesday, August 19, 2020, 1:00pm New York Time

Abstract: As we are heading towards all-electric intercity passenger aircraft, emerging Urban Aerial Vehicles (UAV’s), unmanned or manned, serve as stepping stones to demonstrate start-of-the-art electrification technology. We are already familiar with light-weight drones in cinematography, entertainment, and industrial inspections. However, technology challenges still exist in larger scale (10x-100x) commercial applications such as package delivery drones or passenger flying taxis. These sci-fi like urban aerial mobility solutions are not far from reality but already in much desire in this COVID era when non-human-contact quick point-to-point transports can serve many needs. Though under the aviation category, UAV’s exhibit many different characteristics from more electric aircraft (MEA), and thus face unique design requirements.

In this webinar, we will dive deep into such heavy-duty all-electric UAVs, and particularly their propulsion systems. The webinar will break into several subtopics: 1) Unique technology needs and challenges in such power electronics based powertrains; 2) Propulsion system architectures and multi-physics modeling; 3) A machine-learning enabled automated and efficient system design approach; 4) A fully integrated fault-tolerant motor drive; 5) High-conversion high-voltage power converters; 6) Future opportunities in component/system design and broader energy impact.

Biography:

Dr. Yue Cao is an Assistant Professor in the Energy Systems Group at Oregon State University (OSU). Before joining OSU, he was a research scientist on the propulsions team at Amazon Prime Air in Seattle, WA. He has been a power electronics engineer intern with special projects group at Apple Inc., Cupertino, CA; Halliburton Company, Houston, TX; Flanders Electric, Evansville, IN; and the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, TN. His research interests include power electronics, motor drives, and energy storage with applications in transportation electrification, renewable energy integration, and energy-efficient buildings. Dr. Cao received M.S. (2013) and Ph.D. (2017) in Electrical Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign (UIUC), and B.S. (2011) in electrical engineering and mathematics from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. He received the Myron Zucker award from the IEEE Industry Applications Society (IAS) in 2010. He was a Sundaram Seshu Fellow at UIUC in 2016, where he was a James M. Henderson Fellow in 2012. He is a recipient of Oregon State Learning Innovation Award for transformative education in 2020. Dr. Cao is the Tutorials Chair of ECCE 2021, and he was a Local and Industry co-Chair of ECCE 2018. He was a Panel Chair on More Electric Aircraft at ITEC 2019. He was the Corresponding Technical Programs Chair of 2016 IEEE Power and Energy Conference at Illinois (PECI). In 2020, he established a joint IEEE PES/PELS Chapter at OSU. He is currently an Associate Editor for IEEE Transactions on Transportation Electrification.

 

 

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