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Sustainable Energy Research

Focus

Research in the Sustainable Energy Research Lab is focused in four areas:

  • Solar energy and other alternative energy harvesting schemes
  • Performance measurement and characterization of batteries and other electrochemical power sources
  • Power electronics, particularly dc-dc converters incorporating wide bandgap semiconductors
  • Renewable energy-based power systems, primarily microgrids

Facilities & Equipment

  • Atomic layer electrochemical deposition system to deposit nanoscale semiconductor films;
  • 5kW proton exchange membrane (PEM) fuel cell stack
  • Solartron 1280B electrochemical impedance spectroscopy unit to measure the electrochemical impedance of electrochemical power sources over a wide frequency range (mHz to MHz)
  • Tenney Jr. thermal chamber
  • General power supplies, multimeters, function generators, oscilloscopes, etc.
  • Agilent E5061B LF-RF 5Hz-3GHz network analyzer with impedance analysis
  • (2) Tektronix TCP312 DC-100 MHz, 30 A DC, AC/DC current probe with TCPA300 probe amplifier
  • Probe master 4231 20x/200x differential probes
  • Desktop computers to support computational and circuit simulation activities
  • Software capabilities: PSpice, LTSpice, MATLAB/Simulink

Current research projects

  • Atomic layer electrodeposition of nanostructured lead telluride/cadmium telluride solar cell absorber materials.
  • Nonlinear and linearized stability analysis of renewable energy-based microgrids.
  • State-of-charge (SOC) and state-of-health (SOH) estimation of lead acid, lithium ion and lithium iron phosphate batteries using electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS).
  • Design, analysis, modeling and control of DC-DC converters incorporating silicon carbide and gallium nitride MOSFETs.

Capacity

The lab, located in Drosdick Hall 110, accommodates 10 people.

Contact Information

Pritpal Singh, Ph.D.
Director, Sustainable Energy Research Lab
Email: pritpal.singh@villanova.edu, Phone: 610-519-7378