The Midlands Power Group, a specialist IET section hosted the annual IET Prize Award Evening for the midland undergraduate and postgraduate student projects in the evening of 18^th March 2014. Miss Emma Costerton is awarded the special prize from Lucy Automation for her project “An Energy Efficient Induction Motor Drive for Centrifugal Fan Control”.

The project concerns increasing efficiency of industrial induction motor drives for centrifugal fans. The idea is to develop a new control algorithm which provides optimal ratio of the stator’s voltage amplitude and the frequency (or squared frequency) minimising total losses of power instead of keeping the ratio constant as it is in off-the-shelf converters. It gives approximately additional 3-10% of energy saving. The project includes development of dynamic model of the system with the model of power losses, proof of total power losses minimisation via the ratio adjusting, simulation of the control system and its prototyping based on Nicotra 0.37 KW centrifugal fan, International Rectifiers inverter evaluation board, and dSpace DS1104 hardware-in-the-loop simulator.

Emma Costerton is currently a full time MSc student and her project is under the supervision of Dr Oleh Kiselychnyk (Science City Fellow) and Professor Jihong Wang.