NSF funds new power electronics center

The College of Engineering will share with five universities a new national center for power electronics aimed at achieving dramatic savings in electric power consumption.

The UW–Madison college will join Virginia Tech University, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, North Carolina A&T State University, and the University of Puerto Rico at Mayaguez in a new National Science Foundation Engineering Research Center for power electronics.

UW–Madison’s effort will receive $500,000 per year over five years. In total, NSF will fund the consortium with $2 million in the first year with extensions possible for an additional five years.

Virginia Tech’s Virginia Power Electronics Center submitted the ERC proposal on behalf of the five universities. The new Center for Power Electronics Systems will work to “make the U.S. the most efficient user of electrical energy in the world,” according to VPEC Director Fred Lee. He predicted the center’s work in the next 10 years would result in a 30 percent savings in electric power consumption.

Power electronic equipment sales currently exceed $60 billion annually. This includes motor drives for heat pumps, air conditioners, and other industrial and residential applications.

At UW–Madison, electrical and computer engineering professors Robert Lorenz and Thomas Lipo, along with new faculty member Thomas Jahns, will focus on developing hardware for high-performance industrial drives and variable speed air-conditioners for the home. Lipo, campus director of the project, says the NSF funding will sponsor at least 10 additional graduate students at UW–Madison, as well as new laboratory equipment.