Sustainable Energy Research
Focus
Research in the Sustainable Energy Research Lab is focused in four areas:
- Solar energy and other alternative energy harvesting schemes
- Performance measurement and characterization of batteries and other electrochemical power sources
- Power electronics, particularly dc-dc converters incorporating wide bandgap semiconductors
- Renewable energy-based power systems, primarily microgrids
Facilities & Equipment
- Atomic layer electrochemical deposition system to deposit nanoscale semiconductor films;
- 5kW proton exchange membrane (PEM) fuel cell stack
- Solartron 1280B electrochemical impedance spectroscopy unit to measure the electrochemical impedance of electrochemical power sources over a wide frequency range (mHz to MHz)
- Tenney Jr. thermal chamber
- General power supplies, multimeters, function generators, oscilloscopes, etc.
- Agilent E5061B LF-RF 5Hz-3GHz network analyzer with impedance analysis
- (2) Tektronix TCP312 DC-100 MHz, 30 A DC, AC/DC current probe with TCPA300 probe amplifier
- Probe master 4231 20x/200x differential probes
- Desktop computers to support computational and circuit simulation activities
- Software capabilities: PSpice, LTSpice, MATLAB/Simulink
Current research projects
- Atomic layer electrodeposition of nanostructured lead telluride/cadmium telluride solar cell absorber materials.
- Nonlinear and linearized stability analysis of renewable energy-based microgrids.
- State-of-charge (SOC) and state-of-health (SOH) estimation of lead acid, lithium ion and lithium iron phosphate batteries using electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS).
- Design, analysis, modeling and control of DC-DC converters incorporating silicon carbide and gallium nitride MOSFETs.
Capacity
The lab, located in Drosdick Hall 110, accommodates 10 people.