An End-to-End Modeling and Prototyping Platform for Power Electronics and Electric Drives

Pedagogical methodology of incorporating hands-on laboratory with academic coursework improves retention and understanding. Adopting this laboratory-based approach for electric drives and power electronics has been limited due to the prohibitive cost of facilities, software, and equipment. Furthermore, the multidomain skills necessary to implement motor controls and the safety concerns while working with power electronics have dissuaded many universities from offering these laboratories. This article presents an extremely low-cost electric drives laboratory using a newly developed model-based simulation software and real-time control platform. An undergraduate-level and a graduate-level electric drives laboratories developed and adopted by multiple universities are discussed in detail. Finally, this article presents a comparison of this laboratory to other alternatives.