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he Future Energy Challenge started in 2001 as a bi-annual competition in North America. Prof. Jason Lai from Virginia Tech organized this first competition. In 2003, the competition became an international event and was officially named the International Future Energy Challenge (IFEC). From 2003 to 2015, a total of 152 university teams had participated in IFEC. With more teams participating in the competition, the steering committee of IFEC decided to change the competition from a bi-annual event to an annual event starting in 2016.
In 2017, the competition was hosted by Prof. Qiang Li from the Center for Power Electronics Systems (CPES) at Virginia Tech. Sponsors of the 2017 IFEC include IEEE Power Electronics Society (PELS), IEEE Industry Applications Society (IAS), IEEE Power and Energy Society (PES) and Power Sources Manufacturers Association (PSMA). Combining 2016 and 2017, the number of IFEC participants are almost doubled from the past bi-annual competitions.
In 2017, the competition topic was high-Efficiency high-density isolated dc/dc converter. The converter needed to work with a dc input (360~400 V dc) and output a constant 12 V dc voltage with a peak power of 750 W. The targeted power density was 15 W/cm3 or higher with a peak efficiency requirement of 97% at 50% of the rated load. At the final onsite competition, the converter went through all functional tests, and a 55 oC high operation temperature test. Competition teams were encouraged to adopt WBG power devices in innovative circuit topologies to achieve high efficiency and high density at the same time. Twenty-three teams from five continents joined the competition. The grand prize went to Kunming University of Science and Technology. You can see the full list of winners at energychallenge.weebly.com/ifec-2017.html.
The IFEC2018 call for proposals is already out. This time, the topic is high-efficiency high-density isolated bidirectional dc/dc converter for residential energy storage systems. The final competition will be hosted at the Tsinghua University in Beijing. Visit energychallenge.weebly.com/ifec-2018.html for more information. The IFEC2019 will be hosted at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. The topic will be electric bicycle with an emphasis on motor control. IFEC, a new challenge awaits!
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Provided by
IFEC 2017 Organizing Committee Members:
Qiang Li, Virginia Tech
Jin Wang, Ohio State University
Yaow-ming Chen, National Taiwan University |
