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ORLANDO,
Fla., (Oct. 14, 2009) -- APECOR---Advanced
Power Electronics Corporation--
recently mentored four UCF engineering students helping them win
the Overall First Place in a worldwide competition to make energy
production more efficient and economical.
John
Elmes, vice president of Advanced Technology at APECOR, said the
firm sponsored UCF engineering students Jonathan Baker and Christopher
Hamilton in the 2009
IEEE Future Energy Challenge competition
at Monash
University in
Melbourne, Australia, hosted by the Institute
of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.
“The
worldwide competition resulted in seven finalist teams from Brazil,
China, Germany and the U.S.,” Elmes explained. The UCF team
won First Place Overall in the competition and the Monash University
Wind Turbine Maximiser Award,” he said.
“The
project was to design and construct a wind turbine power output
maximiser for a 200W wind turbine, charging into a 12V battery,” Elmes
explained.
“The
challenge facing the team was to design wind turbine controllers
that maximize the power from a wind turbine, regulate the battery
charging process, and simultaneously protect the wind turbine from
over speed conditions which could potentially destroy it,” he
said.
APECOR
sponsored the UCF team along with Progress Energy, the National
Science Foundation and the Florida Power Electronics Center at
UCF.
Elmes
said the team’s goal now is to develop a three-phase AC/DC
converter for a turbine that can be manufactured for less than
$30 and used in conjunction with solar panels and batteries to
generate sustainable electrical power sufficient for a single home.
“With
further development, the UCF team’s AC/DC converter could
make wind turbine power generation an entirely feasible and affordable
energy alternative for many applications, including remote locations
requiring power,” Elmes said.
UCF
Professor Issa Batarseh, director of the School of Electrical Engineering
and Computer Science, oversaw the project along with graduate advisors
Gustavo Gamboa and Elmes.
APECOR
is a client company of the University
of Central Florida Business Incubation Program at
the Central Florida Research Park.
For
more information, contact:
John
Elmes, VP of Advanced Technology, APECOR, Inc. 407-275-1175, jelmes@apecor.com
Carol
Ann Dykes, Site Manager, UCF Business Incubation Program, 407-882-0211, cdykes@mail.ucf.edu
Larry
Vershel or Beth Payan, Larry Vershel Communications, 407-644-4142
or LvershelCo@aol.com
About
APECOR, Inc.:
Advanced
Power Electronics Corporation (APECOR) carries out research and
development in the area of power electronics. In partnership with
the University of Central Florida, APECOR has been developing high-efficiency
DC/DC voltage regulator modules, hard-switching and soft-switching
DC/DC converters, advanced digital control methods, digitally controlled
distributed power systems (DPS), and soft-switching power factor
corrected AC/DC converters. APECOR is creating power electronics
solutions for many industries, ranging from portable solar battery
chargers to high-power electric vehicles. For more information,
visit www.apecor.com.
About
the UCF Incubation Program:
Since
its founding in 1999, the UCF Business Incubation Program has helped
more than 130 emerging companies (including nearly 80 current clients)
create over $500 million in annual revenue and more than 1600 new
jobs with an average salary of $59,000. With six facilities across
the Greater Orlando community, the Incubation Program is a collaboration
in economic development between the University of Central Florida,
Orange County, the City of Orlando, Seminole County, the City of
Winter Springs, The City of Sanford, Lake County, the City of Leesburg,
and the Florida High Tech Corridor Council. For more information,
please visit www.incubator.ucf.edu. |
