Joseph Bichel and the UBC Solar car team used a sponsorship license from PSIM to help them learn about and design power electronics. The team consisted of 30 undergraduate students with various areas of interest. The electrical group has been utilizing the PSIM license to help them understand and design their PV Max Power Point Tracking (MPPT) and their motor drive system.
“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.”
PSIM is an official equipment supplier for the Formula SAE student competitions & the American Solar Challenge. Visit their websites to learn about how you can get involved and the various categories that schools can compete in.
