One of the identified gaps in the PEMD industry is the use of outdated or inappropriate teaching materials at universities that enable the industry to obtain skilled and talented graduates.
Dr. Walid Issa organized and met with two of the supporting industries to help to identify the required skills and knowledge for the PEMD industry and review the current developed curriculum at SHU and feed in the proposed curriculum framework.
The involved industries are HiT Power (Prof. Mohammad Abusara) and Penso Power (Dr. Nan Jia)
Identified gaps
The discussion with the industrial partners has identified various gaps and gaps causes as follows:
- The academic institutes still consider PEMD topics as elective in their courses and very basic knowledge is served to students represented by hands-out without the use of simulation packages or labs.
- Academics usually use outdated references or mainly spending more than 70% of learning material focusing on less-market centred knowledge, i.e. Thyristor-based rectification, driving learners to be less interested. Furthermore, the learning journey contains deeply focused-math complications delivered by improper approaches rather than developing critical analysis and hands-on using simulations and development kits.
- Negligible knowledge on the wide-bandgap devices and recent development at component and system levels.
- No recognized framework for PEMD curriculum is nationally developed to be considered by other institutes at different levels.
- Low attention was brought to other disciplines contributing to this industry like: Mechanical, automotive, aerospace and material courses to embed awareness about their involvement. Their courses contain zero or minimal content about PEMD.
- Fragmented activities to achieve awareness at earlier stages, i.e. school level and STEM clubs.
- Conveying the required industry knowledge and skills into a course curriculum is still lagging behind compared with their intervention and investment in the research
- The limited number of contact hours allocated by the universities introduces a challenging duty to meet proper PEMD skills.
- No awareness is developed about Freelancing in this industry and boiling a personal development portfolio after graduation.
- Considering inclusivity is still in its early stages
Review of popular Power Electronics Books
Dr. Walid has introduced the popular references used in several academic institutes for the delivery of Power Electronics modules and the discussion resulted in guidance comments on each that might help other instructors to improve their selection or recommendation in the reading list. The comments are personal judgments and are not necessarily agreed widely. The list included:
- Fundamentals of Power Electronics By Robert W. Erickson
- A great book for explaining the operation and modelling DC/DC converters. However, the flow can be improved to suit undergraduate (UG) students.
- Power Electronics Devices, Drivers, Applications, and Passive Components Barry W Williams
- A great book, very detailed and has many solved examples, some chapters are good for UG students but more it is optimal for post-graduates (PG) including Master or PhD degrees.
- Switching Power Supplies A-Z (2nd) By Sanjaya Maniktala
- A great book bringing a good depth of practical experience, and is simple in conveying some concepts. However, its flow does not suit a university curriculum. It is recommended as a supplementary book
- Power Electronics: Devices, Circuits, and Applications, By Muhammad Rashid
- A popular book, detailed for AC converters, fair for DC converters, has many solved examples. However, it is not optimized for keeping the learners excited about the topic, the flow can be improved and requires the instructor to determine the depth of each topic.
- Power Electronics by Daniel Hart
- A good book but very simple to bring a good knowledge for graduates.
- Power Electronics: Converters, Applications, and Design by Ned Mohan
- This book is good for high-level learners (PhD) who already have experience and knowledge about power electronics and need more information about a topic. It is not recommended for a university or course curriculum.
- Transfer Functions of Switching Converters by Christophe P Basso
- A great book for modelling and control basics applied to power converters. The topics and information depth suit more PG learners.
- Power Electronics Step-by-Step: Design, Modeling, Simulation, and Control By Weidong Xiao
- This book is very well designed, the flow and depth of topics suit more UG to PG levels. It focused more on DC converters which are required more in the PEMD industry. It lacks only solved examples to create confident learners.
Skills & Knowledge needs
HiT Power and Penso Power have put their inputs as recruiters and identified what is required to obtain a good power electronics engineer. Here we are considering more system-level companies and their recommendations are not necessarily forming a borderline.
HiT Power input
- They want the engineer to understand all converters’ topologies, thermal assessment, new switches and design of gate drivers
- Using Matlab is essential
- For industries, it is not critical for EEE graduates to know about CFD or Small-signal modelling. Usually, they use numerical tools
- Important to know Embedded systems like TI microcontrollers, TMS family
- A suggestion of two modules: Basics of Power Electronics and Control of Power Electronics
Penso Power input
- They want the engineer to understand the system level and technical aspects of each part, to identify good suppliers and products, inverters and converters, batteries and software.
- They should be able to self learn and motivate
- For field engineers, they should be able to optimize the energy flow driven by revenue and battery life cycle
- System-level modelling skills using Matlab and Power factory
- Programming skills: Python, excel
- They don’t recruit PhDs
As a conclusion, academic intervention is very critical to bridge the gap and sustain a good supply of talented and interested engineers in this discipline. We are still behind because of several reasons as mentioned above and more attention to the academics should be created to start driving the curriculum to an improved version.
In the end, Dr. Issa has discussed a drafted survey to be published to Power Electronics academic tutors and employers to collect more evidenced views about what is delivered in academia and what is required by the market. The discrimination of this survey will occur on Linkedin inviting tutors and employers to provide their input.
Update: