Events – Sterkstroomdispuut

An Introduction to COMSOL Multiphysics for Electrical Power Engineers

12:30-15:30 | 26th of November 2020

With the onset of the second quarter, students in the EPE program enter into what is known as their specialisation courses. Unlike the common core courses in Q1, these courses begin to streamline the batch of students into four profiles viz. Smart Grids, Power Electronics and Drives, Photovoltaics, and High-voltage. As a part of these courses, students also begin to learn software widely-used in academia and the industry. One of these is COMSOL Multiphysics, a software which uses Finite Element Analysis (FEA) to study complex inter-dependent physics such as heat transfer and electrostatics.

The SSD collaborated with the COMSOL team to host a 3-hour online course aimed at introducing students to the software for the first time. The topics covered in the course include,

(i) The GUI
(ii) The Workflow
(iii) Four live software demos
(iv) Q&A session

Frank de Pont, the host for several of the COMSOL webinars, explained in length and in detail about the various powerful capabilities of the COMSOL environment. We were overjoyed to see that the students remained interested and interactive throughout the course, albeit with a few breaks in-between.

Owing to the huge success of this course, the SSD will surely consider the possibility of advanced courses on COMSOL and also trainings in other software platforms in the future!

Enexis B.V.

12:00-13:00 | 30th of September 2020

The Smart Grids specialization of our Electrical Power Engineering(EPE) program broadly deals with studies related to the power system; how to study power flows within the network, how to optimize sharing between various nodes, and how to ensure long-term reliability of the grid infrastructure. The next company to host a lecture with us was Enexis B.V. one of the important DSOs of the Netherlands.

What are DSOs?

Well the two major entities responsible for the ‘transmission’ and ‘distribution’ of power throughout the country are the TSOs (Transmission System Operators) and the DSOs (Distribution System Operators), respectively. Being a DSO, Enexis is in-charge for handling the power grid in Groningen, Drenthe, Overijssel, Noord-Brabant, and Limburg. That’s a lot of work!

The speaker for the lecture, Sharmistha Bhattacharya, works as a Strategic Consultant in the Asset Management Department of Enexis. Since her main expertise lies in power quality issues, students were eager to hear her thoughts on the challenges faced by the distribution network in the world today. After a short overview of the Enexis Group, she spoke about her experiences in the industry. Students were highly interactive when discussing asset management and the interesting projects the company was working on. At the end, Sharmistha shares a few tips and tricks on getting employed in the smart grids job market.

The event was very insightful and helped the students in getting a larger picture of the role and responsibilities of a distribution system operator in today’s world.

Ampulz B.V.

10:00-11:00 | 18th of August 2020

The next lecture was taken by Mahesh, Bart, and Albert from Ampulz B.V., a power electronics company dealing with a variety of clients in the public transport, educational, as well as oil&gas industries. Ampulz is a daughter company of Vonk B.V. which plays an important role in enabling the energy transition through catering solutions for Power Conversion, Electrical & Instrumentation, and Control & Automation challenges. The speakers discussed the long history of the company, and described the key ongoing projects. One of these is the Decomplexed platform, which was powered by the innovative VONK energy system. The students were thrilled to hear about the various internship and job opportunities at the company.

The feedback we received from this lecture was proof that our efforts in improving the quality of our online events were in the right direction!

ProDrive Technologies

13:00-14:00 | 23rd of June 2020

The first company contacted by SSD was the renowned ProDrive Technologies, headquartered at Eindhoven. With close to 1500 employees as of 2020, ProDrive is a leader in the innovation and manufacturing for the medical, automotive, semiconductor, and energy industries. They hence raised several eyebrows of students following the Power Electronics and Drives specialization of our Electrical Power Engineering program. The speaker was Sjors Verkammen, a masters student carrying out his thesis at the company. His work related to efficient charging in electrical vehicles, and design of the corresponding power electronics. Hearing his story provided students a gist of the energetic work culture at ProDrive, as well as a peek at how smoothly the company operates from within. After his talk, a representative from HR, Ruud de Vries, explained in better detail the internship and job opportunities at ProDrive.

An idea of how the company is involved in a vast variety of markets and the applications of their technologies in these fields has been made known to the students.

Overall, the enthusiasm of students made the very first online event/lecture in the pandemic age a success! It was also a chance for the board of SSD to know where we could improve in organizing online events to make them more educational and informative.

Excursion to Royal SMIT Transformers, Nijmegen

9:00-16:00 | 12th of February 2020

Transformers, small or big play a critical role in the electricity market on a daily basis. The scaling of voltage and current from a lower to higher value or vice-versa is what plays a major role in reducing line losses. A very big manufacturing company in this sector is the Royal SMIT Transformers which is one of the leading manufacturers of medium sized transformers worldwide.

Founded in 1913, the company has clients all over the world. The easy access to ports in Nijmegen where it is situated gives it a competitive edge in exporting large sized transformers and hence have a larger scope in experimenting new designs.

On February 12^th, 2020 SSD along with DSD Waldur (the power engineering dispuut of TU Eindhoven) was invited to visit the factory of Royal SMIT Transformers at Nijmegen. All it took was a ninety minutes’ drive from Delft to Nijmegen to get started with the excursion. Our group consisted of eleven students from Delft and Eindhoven who were all looking forward to this.

The excursion to Royal SMIT Transformers had a lot of activities. A brief talk about the company was followed up with some very interesting research done by the company. This was followed by lunch and then the much awaited “guided” factory tour. The factory tour gave us an insight into each, and every step involved in manufacturing a transformer. From the laminating of the layered steel transformer cores to the winding of the paper-wrapped copper conductors around wooden frames, no assembly step was left to our imagination . The distinct task division which enables the overall process to become efficient was very evident. This was followed by a small talk about the testing of transformers once the manufacturing and assembling is done.

The whole day was very exciting and being able to watch the actual transformers being built in many different stages was informative. The employees were kind enough to answer our queries taking time off their schedule.

SSD is thankful to Royal SMIT Transformers for organising a fun as well as an intuitive excursion.

Photo post the factory tour in the company

Christmas Lunch

This year’s Christmas Lunch was amazingly popular. A lot more people joined than expected, a total of 90 people gathered in the High Voltage lab! Perhaps everyone wanted to take a last look as the lab will be completely renovated starting January 2019, but probably everyone just wanted to enjoy a good time together and have a luxury lunch.

Thank you all for your enthusiasm! Some pictures of the event can be found here as well.

Excursion to ELEQ

In Dutch, there is the saying “to measure is to know”, but all over the world power system engineers know the importance of current measurements. With some of the obvious applications being the acquisition of data and power flow analysis, current measurements are also used for protecting the system against different kinds of faults.

Even though not all power system engineers know Dutch, they all do know the Dutch company ELEQ, for the very same reason as mentioned above. ELEQ designs and builds current transformers, devices that can transform a large current in one conductor to a small, measurable current in the second conductor (See header image for an example).

On October 3rd, the SSD was invited to visit the engineering office and first factory of ELEQ in Steenwijk, Overijssel. As a pleasant surprise, our group of 21 did not only consist of students but also two alumni, of which one is an ex-board member of the SSD and son of ELEQ’s general manager! Thank you Reinout for sharing your experiences of the path from an EPE student up to graduation, and what the world of engineering has to offer.

The excursion to ELEQ consisted of a full programme of activities. A relatively short talk about the company’s business allowed us to continue quickly to the technical parts; a very interesting lecture about the principles of current transformers which would be just a little too specific to be taught at the university, and therefore a great addition. This was followed by a factory tour where the fabrication of current transformers, from small ones to very large ones used in high voltage switchgear, takes place. We ended at the testing area where the latest innovation of ELEQ was explained and, naturally, an experiment was carried out that produced a lot of sparks.

The whole day led to the most exciting part of the excursion: designing, building and testing our own current transformers! With some basic requirements and the equations from the lecture in the morning session, the number of turns, transformer core, and wire thickness could be determined. One of the most experienced factory workers then wound the wire around the core, and finally, we passed by two testing stations to ensure that the current transformer worked as required.

Thank you ELEQ for this unique day, the smooth organization and the beautiful souvenir of a current transformer!

Siemens Study Tour

From May 5th until May 10th 2018 the Sterkstroomdispuut visited Berlin, the center of technology when it comes to electrical engineering. Our main purpose on this trip was to visit the Siemens AG factories, but we also visited General Electric and Menzel Motors. Weekend in Berlin was awesome with visit to TV tower, museums, parks and other interesting places in Berlin.

Siemens Lunch Lecture

SSD – Siemens Lunch lecture was an interesting lunch discussion with presentations about opportunities at Siemens. The highlight of the Siemes’s study tour to Siemens factories in Berin was also given by the guest speaker, Gert-Jan Van Raamsdonk. Thank you for participating! Looking forward to the amazing trip to Berlin with you. Register at ETV desk for participation.

SSD Lunch Lecture – Wireless Charging

We had an SSD lunch lecture on March 28, 2018 (Wednesday) from 12:45-13-30. This lecture wass on “Wireless Charging” and the speaker was Prasanth Venugopal who is currently working as a Senior Electrical Engineer at Qualcomm.

In addition to the lecture on wireless charging, the speaker talked about the best way to handle graduation projects and survival tips in case of too much work load.