"The Electric Cars in Our Future: Can We Charge Them Up? Do They Really Help?"
The shift to more-electric cars and transportation brings opportunities for control, extreme performance, energy reduction and flexibility, cheaper operation, and lower emissions. Customers see limited range, battery performance limits, slow refueling, and lack of charging facilities as big drawbacks. This presentation shows how the energy needs of most electric and plug-in hybrid cars can be met with the conventional electrical outlets most of us have. Safety protection, metering, billing, and other functions can be supported by a car to turn a “dumb” electrical outlet into a smart vehicle charge point. Actual driver needs are discussed, showing how more advanced chargers fit in. Survey results on the University of Illinois campus help to support the ideas. The talk also explores how electric cars will affect the electricity grid. Simple economic methods can make electric vehicles important partners for the future of electricity.
Presenter: Philip Krein, Grainger Endowed Chair Emeritus in Electric Machinery and Electromechanics in Electrical and Computer Engineering
Philip T. Krein has been working on electric and hybrid cars for more than 25 years. He works on high-performance motors, circuits and systems for chargers, and interconnections to the power grid. He is the Grainger Endowed Chair Professor Emeritus in Electric Machinery and Electromechanics and Director of the Grainger Center for Electric Machinery and Electromechanics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His startup company, SolarBridge Technologies, Inc., developed long-life integrated inverters for solar energy, and was acquired by Sunpower. He holds 42 U.S. patents and is a past President of the IEEE Power Electronics Society and a past Chair of the IEEE Transportation Electrification Community. He is a Fellow of the IEEE, a Fellow of the U.S. National Academy of Inventors, and a member of the U.S. National Academy of Engineering.
Saturday Engineering for Everyone is an open and free lecture series aimed at non-engineers of all backgrounds who are interested in learning about engineering.
Refreshments served at 10 a.m. in the lobby of the ECE Building, 306 N. Wright St., Urbana.
Talks from 10:15-11:15 a.m. in the Grainger Auditorium, just off the lobby of the ECE Building.
Metered parking is available on Wright Street south of University Avenue, and in the north parking structure off University Avenue between Mathews and Goodwin avenues.
