Abdullahi Abubakar Mas’ud

On the Use of Monopole Antennas for Determining the Effect of the Enclosure of a Power Transformer Tank in Partial Discharges Electromagnetic Propagation.

A well-defined condition-monitoring for power transformers is key to implementing a correct condition-based maintenance (CBM). In this regard, partial discharges (PD) measurement and its analysis allows to carry out on-line maintenance following the standards IEC-60270 and IEC-60076. However, new PD measurements techniques, such as acoustics or electromagnetic (EM) acquisitions using ultra-high-frequency (UHF) sensors are being taken into account, IEC-62478. PD measurements with antennas and the effect of their EM propagation in power transformer tanks is an open research topic that is considered in this paper. In this sense, an empty tank model is studied as a rectangular cavity and their resonances are calculated and compared with their measurement with a network analyser. Besides, two low cost improved monopole antennas deployed inside and outside of the tank model capture background noise and PD pulses in three different test objects (Nomex, twisted pair and insulator). The average spectrum of them are compared and can be found that mainly, the antenna frequency response, the frequency content distribution depending on the PD source and the enclosure resonances modes are the main factors to be considered in PD acquisitions with these sensors. Finally, with this set-up, it is possible to measure PD activity inside the tank from outside.

Polymeric Materials for Conversion of Electromagnetic Waves from the Sun to Electric Power

Solar photoelectric energy converted into electricity requires large surface areas with incident light and flexible materials to capture these light emissions. Currently, sunlight rays are converted to electrical energy using silicon polymeric material with efficiency up to 22%. The majority of the energy is lost during conversion due to an energy gap between sunlight photons and polymer energy transformation. This energy conversion also depends on the morphology of present polymeric materials. Therefore, it is very important to construct mechanisms of highest energy occupied molecular orbitals (HOMO)s and the lowest energy unoccupied molecular orbitals (LUMO)s to increase the efficiency of conversion. The organic and inorganic solar cells used as dyes can absorb more photons from sunlight and the energy gap will be less for better conversion of energy to electricity than the conventional solar cells. This paper provides an up-to-date review on the performance, characterization, and reliability of different composite polymeric materials for energy conversion. Specific attention has been given to organic solar cells because of their several advantages over others, such as their low-energy payback time, conversion efficiency and greenhouse emissions. Finally, this paper provides the recent progress on the application of both organic and inorganic solar cells for electric power generations together with several challenges that are currently faced.

Design of Solar Powered Charging Backpack

Efficiency, reliability, high power quality and continuous operation are important aspects in electric vehicle attraction system. Therefore, quick fault detection, isolation and enhanced fault-tolerant control for open-switches faults in inverter driving systems become more and more required in this filed. However, fault detection and localization algorithms have been known to have many performance limitations due to speed variations such as wrong decision making of fault occurrence. Those weaknesses are investigated and solved in this paper using currents magnitudes fault indices, current direct component fault indices and a decision system. A simulation model and experimental setup are utilized to validate the proposed concept. Many simulation and experimental results are carried out to show the effectiveness of the proposed fault detection approach.The inverter with critical loads should be able to provide critical loads with a stable and seamless voltage during control mode change as well as clearing time. The indirect current control has been proposed for providing stable voltage with critical load during clearing time and seamless control mode transfer of inverters. However, the islanding detection is difficult since with the indirect current control the magnitude and frequency of voltage do not change when the islanding occurs. The conventional anti-islanding method based on the magnitude and frequency of voltage variation cannot apply to the indirect current control. This paper proposes an islanding detection method for the indirect current control. The proposed islanding detection method can detect the islanding using reactive power perturbation and observation when the frequency and magnitude of voltage don’t vary during clearing time. In order to verify the proposed anti-islanding method, the experimental results of a 600W three-phase inverter are provided.