Background

With the strong incentives of green and free energy sources and advancement of battery technology, power generation is not just solely relied on coal-fired or gas-fired power plants but everyone can produce their own electricity from these energy sources to power their own loads to certain power level. Many of these sources and applications are of dc nature but today’s electricity infrastructure is still based on ac. Therefore there are unnecessary power processing stages to handle the power generation to the user (i.e. dc to ac and back to dc again). In addition, the smart use of power electronics converters can help electricity users lower the generation cost and optimize the system efficiency. This is done by overlaying the electricity network with a telecommunication network. This project will employ power line communication technique on dc bus system. Objective This project aims to develop a dc microgrid platform for renewable energy sources and battery, and for practical applications such as lighting, cooking and computing and study the control, stability and power management aspects of dc microgrid. Tasks 1. Develop a bi-directional dc/dc power converter for battery charging and discharging with power line communication capability [Code: DLu-2012-01; 1 Honour Thesis Student or 1 ME/MPE] (TAKEN) 2. Develop a dimmable electronic ballast for LED lamp with power line communication capability [Code: DLu-2012-02; 1 Engineering Project Student] 3. Develop a maximum power point tracker for a solar panel [Code: DLu-2012-03; 1 Engineering Project Student] 4. Develop a power line communication technique suitable for control of power converters [Code: DLu-2012-04; 1 Honour Thesis Student or 1 ME/MPE] 5. Study the power management scheme to perform optimization on varies parameters (e.g. efficiency, cost, etc.) [Code