UBC Solar Car Team uses PSIM to Learn About Power Conversion

October 29, 2018 | Posted in News

Joseph Bichel and the UBC Solar car team are making use of a sponsorship license from PSIM to help them learn about and design power electronics. The team consists of 30 undergraduate students with various areas of interest, the electrical group has been utilizing a PSIM sponsorship license to help them understand and design their PV Max Power Point Tracking (MPPT) and their motor drive system. Joseph comments about their use of PSIM in their design work:

“UBC Solar has recently undertaken two power electronics design projects: an MPPT system and motor controller. Our team is interested in designing an in-house Maximum Power Point Tracking system (MPPT) and motor controller in order to give our team members the opportunity to really understand the black-boxes of our off-shelf components. Since most members on the team know little to nothing of power converters, PSIM assisted us in understanding how they operate, which will provide us with a baseline intuition when we are debugging the circuit prototypes. We use PSIM to contrast the data collected from the bench to then take questions to faculty members helping our project.”

The UBC Solar car team is just getting started and will hopefully be able to make full use of PSIM’s powerful tools as the team moves towards a functional electric vehicle powered by the sun.

Request a sponsorship license for your undergraduate student team.

PSIM is an official equipment supplier for the Formula SAE student competitions & the American Solar Challenge. Click the links to learn about how you can get involved and the various categories that schools can compete in.