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  • Home
  • TEAM
  • Research
  • Teaching
  • Publications
  • Facilities and Equipment

Facilities and Equipment

Flexible Integration Laboratory for Distributed Energy Systems (FIELD) at the University of Alabama is equipped to test grid integrated power electronics research. There is >100 kW of three-phase grid connection and three single-phase 50A power outlets to perform power electronics grid integration and analysis tests on various testing power levels. Below is a summary of the important capabilities at FIELD.
1. EV grid integration equipment: FIELD has a Nichicon 4.5 kW vehicle-to-load (V2L) power supply called Power Mover that can be connected to a CHAdeMO compatible EV (shown below). This type of set-up can be used to power loads during emergency conditions. We also have a 25 kW eMotorWerks charger and CHAdeMO DC connector. This test setup can be used for any CHAdeMO compatible EV fast charging tests. Finally, FIELD has two units of 40 A Level 2 eMotorWerks JuiceBox EVSEs.
PictureNichicon V2L Power Mover

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eMotorWerks 25kW DC G2V and V2V charger
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CHAdeMO DC charge connector
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eMotorWerks Level 2 EVSE [2 units]
2. Power grid simulation and testing equipment: A real-time hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) test set-up is available for grid simulation and analysis. Below figures show the critical components of this test system. A digital real-time simulator (OPAL-RT OP5600) is used for real-time modeling and simulation of power grid.  It is a multi-core target platform that consists of 12 INTEL processor cores at 3.0~GHz including a SPARTAN-3 FPGA card as the I/O interface with 256 analog and digital I/O lines. There are three racks of this unit to be utilized for testing to implement the large scale power electronics integration testing. Further, FIELD has an Ametek 22.5 kVA single-/three-phase four-quadrant AC/DC power supply a.k.a. grid simulator that can work in conjunction with OP5600. Last, a Yokogawa DL850E is used for signal measurement and recording purposes when doing experiments for extended durations.  A connection of those units are shown in the below-right figure.
PictureOPAL-RT OP5600 real-time simulator [3 racks available]

PictureAmetek MX22.5 Grid Simulator [2 Units]

PictureYokogawa DL850E ScopeCorder for simultaneous DAQ and Oscilloscope

PictureHIL testbed set-up

3. Power electronics simulation and testing equipment: FIELD has all the capabilities of an advanced power electronics laboratory. ​Power electronics design and operation within the grid integrated systems are the main research themes in FIELD. The below picture shows a custom designed 10 kW three-phase back-to-back voltage source inverter system called DEMT. The back-to-back inverter system is composed of a dual three-phase inverter ready to be interfaced with dSPACE MicroLabBox development system. This system is rated with the maximum switching frequency of 20 kHz and a maximum input/output voltage of 750 VDC. For the three-phase modules, APTGT50A120T1G IGBTs from Microsemi with SP1 package is used. The system can also be readily used with the same-package SiC devices. This custom designed system (DEMT) matches one-to-one with rapid prototype environment provided by dSPACE MicroLabBox also shown below. ​We also have a Typhoon 402 HIL simulator with an interface for TI C2000 DSPs. This set-up helps us to fast develop power electronic circuitry and develop controllers. Finally, we have different Cree SiC device and gate drive evaluation boards for ready to use testing.     
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DEMT custom designed back-to-back three-phase inverters
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dSPACE MicroLabBox
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Inside of DEMT
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Typhoon 402 HIL simulator
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Typhoon HIL DSP interface
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Cree SiC evaluation board [4 units]
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Six Channel SiC MOSFET Driver
4. Other lab equipment: Other related power electronics testing and measurement equipment are listed as follows. 
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Tektronix MDO4034B-SA3 mixed doman oscilloscope
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Tektronix TBS2104 Basic Oscilloscope [2 units]
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Keithley 2231A-30-3 Triple Channel DC Power Supply [4 units]
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Tektronix digital multimeter: DMM4050 [2 units]
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Keithley function generator: 3390 [2 units]
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Magna-Power SL200-7.5/UI Programmable DC Power Supply
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E-Craftsmen 500uH@28Arms 3-phase inductor.
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PEM CWT AC current probes [3 units]
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Power resistors - 10 Ohm 500W [10 units]
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Magna-Power XR600-16.5/208 Programmable DC Power Supply
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Mosebach 30 kW resistive load bank
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Magna-Power ALx2.5-1000-75 DC Electronic Load
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Fluke thermal multimeter: 279FC
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Fluke hand-held multimeter: 179 [2 units]
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Keysight LCR meter: U1733C
5. Field testing equipment: We collect real household power consumption data using eGauge core as shown below. This data collection provides us end-node voltage, current, phase angle, active/reactive power consumption of different residential houses. The device allows the storage of the data and syncs to the cloud with one-second granularity and up to two weeks of duration. 

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