Universal power electronics hardware trainer for teaching the DC grid

Developing a new curriculum for a power electronics course also gives room to implement multiple teaching and examination methods. Traditional teaching using a textbook, oral lectures and a single written examination can be enhanced with multiple new methods for teaching. Not only replacing part of the oral lectures with practical assignments, but also new teaching methods for practicing the theoretical content, can be implemented. Online simulation and design tools are inevitable to prepare for the practical assignments. The paper discusses how an universal power electronics hardware trainer can be used, for multiple laboratory exercises, and some practical examples are elaborated. The aim of the hardware trainer, is to directly show the students, the relation between theory and practice. The hardware should be configurable, to be able to use it for various applications, ranging from dc-dc converters for solar and battery interfacing, inverters for motor control and synchronous buck converter for DC grid manager. The hardware trainer is to be extended with a dedicated control and load board.