Design of Embedded Experiments in Power Electronics Class

Power electronics is an electric circuit technology for electric power conversion and is taught in many universities due to its importance in modern society. This technology is traditionally taught in lecture courses, which are based on the operation analysis of the power conversion circuits based on the circuit theory. However, unlike other fields regarding the electric circuit, the quality of the power conversion circuits is fundamentally dependent on the non-ideal features of the circuit elements as well as the size including the cooling system. Therefore, the practical design of the power conversion circuit profoundly relies not only on understanding the basic circuit operation but also on the knowledge of the actual circuit elements, including their non-ideal features. The traditional class based on theoretical circuit operation analysis was difficult to cover the latter knowledge, which may have resulted in insufficient educational achievement in power electronics technology. This paper proposes a teaching approach that embeds mini-experiments in the lecture to overcome this difficulty. These mini-experiments are carefully designed to be seamlessly combined with the lecture and shown to the students during the lecture by utilizing IT-based measurement instruments. According to the students’ survey, the students felt the improvement of the lecture quality by the embedded experiment, although the difficulty in the time scheduling for the embedded experiment is a remaining problem to be solved in future studies.