A modular power electronics instructional laboratory

The study of power electronics draws upon a broad range of knowledge and often required a fair amount of experience. This suggests that laboratory instruction should be an integral component of a power electronics curriculum. However, before a single watt is delivered, the student must understand not only the operation of the converter topology but also more advanced concepts such as control theory, gate drive isolation, and layout issues. Our approach is to use a "blue box" module were these details are pre-built for convenience, but not hidden inside a "black box." Improvements to our "blue box" modules are described in this paper and include a dual-MOSFET control box with independently isolated FET devices and a high quality PWM inverter built discretely.