REAPER Lab Texas

The Renewable Energy and Advanced Power Electronics Research laboratory at Texas A&M University is well equipped to support a diverse array of research projects. Here are some of our resources in our College Station campus laboratory. Researchers including postdocs, graduate, and undergraduate students have access to 1,000 square foot research laboratory dedicated to power electronics in the Wisenbaker Engineering Building. It has over 150kVA of dedicated 3-phase 208V power, access to a California Instruments 54kVA fully programmable 3-phase AC source and a dedicated 12KW fully programmable, 4-quadrant regenerative Abstract Power three-phase AC power supply to simulate arbitrary AC grid conditions suitable for grid-connected inverter testing. Combined with multiple solar array simulators and Magna-Power DC power supplies, the lab has the ability to test end-to end a complete PV electrical system.

Equipment

An incomplete list of relevant equipment dedicated to REAPER Lab includes:

• Typhoon 404 and 604 HIL
• dSpace MicroLabBox with DS1202 PowerPC DualCore 2 GHz processor and DS1302 I/O board
• dSpace PHS with ACE1007MC DS1007 multicore processor, DS2004 16 channel high speed A/D board, DS2102 6-channel 16-bit high resolution D/A board, DS4002 8 timing channel, 32 digital I/O board, and associated connector boards
• Abstract Power 12KW Primate Power™ three-phase, four-quadrant regenerative, programmable as power source
• California Instruments FCS series 54kVA, 0-480V, 50/60Hz three independent phases, programmable ac source
• AE Techron 7224 dc enabled wide bandwidth amplifier
• Tektronix 4000 series MSO 4 channel mixed-signal oscilloscopes, (simultaneously display and analyze up to 4 analog channels and 16 digital channels synchronized to the same time base)
• Tektronix 4000 series TDS series 4 channel oscilloscopes
• Tektronix TDS 3014B four channel oscilloscope
• Tektronix optically isolated differential voltage probes and hall-effect current probes
• Chroma electronics loads
• Avtron 50kW restive load bank,
• Behlman single phase 3000VA programmable ac power source and software,
• Venable Frequency response analyzer system for closed loop control tuning,
• BMA thermal chamber
• BK Precision 9110 100W dc power supply
• Magna-Power electronics dc power supply
• BK Precision 1791 high current dc regulated power supply
• HP 6235A triple output power supply
• HP E3612A dc power supply
• Agilent dc electronic load 250W
• Keithley 2461 source meter
• Yokogawa WT 1600 6-channel digital power meter
• Voltech PM100 power analyzer
• BK precision 4MHz function generator with counter
• Fluke and Tektronix digital multi-meters
• HP function generators
• Philips RLC meter
• DataTaker Datalogger DT80 series 3
• Texas Instruments series DSP platforms with gate drive isolation circuitry suitable for DC-DC, DC-AC converter, PWM control
• Microchip PIC18x series microcontroller integrated development environment, C compiler, and custom-build demonstration / prototype hardware platform suitable for both switch-level digital control as well as supervisory control

Offices

REAPER Lab provides researchers office space inside an additional suite in the Wisenbaker Engineering Building. The suite contains meeting space, white board, copier/large-format printer, as well as separate offices to facilitate quiet working conditions in addition to a collaborative workspace.

Computing

All necessary computers and telecommunications equipment are available to perform our required work. The computing and communication infrastructure is professionally managed and maintained by an in-house dedicated team of IT professionals through the office of Network and Computing Services. All servers are redundantly backed up, including to an offsite facility. The complete suite of Microsoft Outlook is in full deployment to facilitate information exchange and meeting schedules, with web conferencing also available and supported. In addition, the REAPERlab uses dSpace Control Desk, MATLAB, National Instruments LabView, PLEX, SolidWorks, and many other standard software packages.