Teaching of first course on power electronics: a building-block approach

Summary form only given. This presentation describes a building-block approach to a power electronics curriculum that is pedagogical as well as practical for designers. This approach was developed with the help of over 250 leading faculty members in this field who attended four NSF-sponsored workshops at the University of Minnesota in 1991, 1994, 1997 and 1998. In this approach, the generic building-block is analyzed once, and then used systematically and repeatedly in converters of DC power supplies, power-factor-correction circuits, DC and AC motor drives, and UPS. There are several advantages: students learn the commonality between various converters, and the fundamentals are conveyed in a clear and concise manner thus allowing time for discussing design details of practical significance. As this presentation describes, another pedagogical impact of this approach is on teaching of electromechanical energy conversion. Students have come to expect electric machines courses to be staid, boring and old-fashioned. Instead, we can make this topic interesting and more relevant by examining in a single semester all of the subsystems that make up electric drives: electric machines, power-electronic-based converters, mechanical system requirements, feedback controller design, and the interaction of drives with the utility grid