The growth of humanity, from less than 2 billion in the end of the 19th century to over 7 billion in the beginning of the 21st century is strongly related to our ability to use energy. The use of fossil energy cause severe problems with the environment and is truly challenging the future of man kind. We strongly need I) to reduce our use of energy and II) to transfer from fossil and probably nuclear to renewable energy sources.

This is where Power Electronics is important. Independent of primary energy source, a lot of our use of energy involves electric energy technology. Manufacturing, transport, lighting, ventilation, heating, electricity transmission, physics research, ... all involve one or several steps where the energy is converted to electricity before finally consumed. In addition, renewable energy sources like wind, wave and solar are entirely dependent on conversion of the primary energy source to electricity as an intermediate state before finally consumed.

In most, if not all, of these applications the energy is converted by means of switching power electronics converters built by power semiconductors and controlled in real time by very fast control systems. The development of modern power electronics started a bit more than half a century ago and is today developing faster than ever before. As an engineer with ambitions to work with, or just understand the fundaments of, electric energy conversion and control, it is important to study power electronics - it is involved "everywhere" in electric energy flow control.

This course lays the ground for the students ability to apply Power Electronic Design and Control in a multitude of applications, such as switched mode power supplies, motor drive systems, solar cell converters, electric vehicle chargers, power grid applications such as "Unified Power Flow Controllers" (UPFC), active grid filters, high voltage direct current (HVDC). All these applications of Power Electronic converters are based on a solid understanding of design and control of both DC and AC systems. 

The goal of the course is to have a general understanding of the applications mentioned, and a deep understanding of the fundamentals. In depth studies of the applications is made in subsequent courses, see further description below.

To reach that goal, this course has three "legs":

I) Design of power electronic converters. This provides knowledge about how to select, design and use both active (transistors, diodes) and passive (capacitors, inductors) in a cost effective way that provides the intended function and lifetime.

II) Modulation and control with power electronic converters. This provides knowledge about how to use a certain power electronic circuit to provide the intended control of voltage and current - referred to as voltage modulation and current control.

III) Practical experimentation in two labs. The first lab targets a "four quadrant DC/DC converter" used to run a DC-machine. The second lab targets an electric bicycle drive that essentially is a "DC/AC converter driving a  BrushLess DC (BLDC) Motor". The second lab ends with a bicycle ride utilizing your own controller settings. Both labs gives the necessary understanding of modulation and current control applied to DC and AC systems, needed to proceed deeper into any of the advanced courses in power electronics.