NCREPT Creates Buzz in Electronics

It’s easy to get lost in Alan Mantooth’s titles.

An electrical engineering professor and 21st century endowed chair in mixed-signal IC design and CAD at the University of Arkansas, Mantooth also serves as executive director for both the National Center for Reliable Electric Power Transmission and the National Science Foundation Center on GRid-connected Advanced Power Electronic Systems.

What, exactly, does that mean?

Very roughly translated, it means Mantooth works on the kinds of projects most people can’t comprehend. Everyone understands bolstering bottom lines, though, and Mantooth’s work aims to do just that, whether it’s by making hybrid automobiles more efficient or by improving the way electricity is distributed and managed by utility companies.

“I just know he’s very passionate about what he’s doing and really on top of things,” Arkansas Electric Cooperative Corp. vice president Jonathan Oliver said of Mantooth.

 

A History Lesson

Mantooth talks about NCREPT, located at The Arkansas Research and Technology Park in Fayetteville, in much the same way a proud papa gushes about a newborn. Ground for the 7,000-SF facility was broken in 2006, with a ribbon-cutting held Oct. 31, 2008, and Mantooth was there for practically every baby step.

With about 2,000 SF of office space and the rest consisting of testing bays and a control room, NCREPT cost $4.5 million to build. Funding came from the U.S. Department of Energy, the National Science Foundation and the University of Arkansas. Most of the federal money was designated for equipment purchases.

The facility, which tests power electronics at grid power levels up to six megavolt amperes – enough to power roughly 300 homes – was established to explore “solid-state solutions for the electric power grid, including both protection devices and energy storage applications,” according to the NCREPT Web site.

Mantooth said it largely was a result of the DOE determining it needed more testing facilities because “we’re going to reach a crisis point in regard to the electronic power grid.”

Such a crisis could be security-related or economic in nature, and one of NCREPT’s aims, therefore, is to make the grid more robust and resilient. Mantooth said such work, which could include finding new ways to re-route power or isolating shortages, doesn’t happen overnight.

“People need to remember this is going to take a couple of decades because it took five decades to build it,” he said in reference to the grid.

The establishment last year of the NSF-backed GRAPES, however, could accelerate the process. And while the UA is the lead research institution, it should be noted the endeavor includes the University of South Carolina.

 

GRAPES is good

GRAPES is a five-year program, eligible for two additional five-year terms, with an annual operating budget of $1 million. Its focus largely is in the field of power electronics.

“If we’re going to modify the power grid, we need intelligent power flow devices and protective devices,” Mantooth said. “That’s power electronics.”

Mantooth used refrigerators and air conditioners as examples. He said the kinds of devices he and his staff construct and test could lower energy use (and cost) in such appliances.

And while an air conditioner that allows the temperature to rise a couple of degrees in a home during peak billing periods might sound like a small thing, millions of them could have a sweeping effect.

“These have applications from the residential level to the utility companies themselves to companies like Wal-Mart, Tyson or Baldor,” Mantooth said.

One current project is a fault current limiter, to be tested later this year in a UA lab, that might be beneficial not only in isolating power outages, but helpful in its ability to “allow a limited amount of power to flow, to serve as a sort of surge protector for the grid,” Mantooth said.

Another plus for GRAPES is that it is an industry-university cooperative, one of just two major efforts in the U.S. investigating the aforementioned issues.

“This is a user test facility and the reason we exist is very simple,” Mantooth said, “to accommodate various prototypes to commercialization activities.”

Oliver said that’s an invaluable asset.

“The research they’re doing in power electronics really supports the long-term needs of the grid,” he said. “That’s the heart of what they do.”

 

Prius Pick-Me-Up?

When Mantooth and his staff and students aren’t attempting to overhaul the grid, they find time for other projects. One such endeavor last year led to a R&D Magazine award. The magazine annually recognizes the 100 most technologically significant new products of the year.

NCREPT’s entry was a high-temperature silicon carbide power module developed in conjunction with Sandia National Laboratories, Rohm Co. Ltd., and Arkansas Power Electronics International Inc., among others.

APEI, in fact, is a spin-off of an earlier, more informal version of NCREPT. Today APEI, which specializes in power electronics systems, electronic motor drives, and power packaging, has 19 employees and claims annual revenue of more than $3 million from state, federal and private contracts.

APEI is housed in a 6,000-SF facility across the street from NCREPT. Its part in the previously mentioned power module could lead to improvements in hybrid vehicles like the Toyota Prius.

Mantooth said the power electronic component of the current model of Prius is about the size of a large pizza box and requires a cooling element. The new product is closer in size to a cigarette box, and three of the units – placed side by side – represent a smaller, lighter, more efficient alternative. Additionally, the new product doesn’t have to be cooled, so it eliminates a “point of failure,” according to Mantooth.

“Using this device,” he said, “this car is going to go farther on a gallon of gas, so to speak, or on an electron.

“It’s a perfect example of how industry and a university can work together and move innovative things forward.”

 

The Next Step

Originally consisting of three professors and eight graduate students, NCREPT now boasts six faculty members and two additional employees. An annual operating budget of about $2.5 million helps Mantooth and the others work with about 30 graduate students and a half-dozen undergraduate students at any given time.

“Those numbers are growing as we speak,” said Mantooth, who added an ideal total would be 40 to 45 graduate students and as many as 60 undergraduates.

Toward that end, NCREPT has ramped up its recruiting efforts, including hosting busloads of students from all over Arkansas and working in conjunction with students from the UA’s journalism department on a marketing campaign. Mantooth said the results already are being seen, and the UA’s program is part of a pack of heavyweights that includes Virginia Tech, Georgia Tech, Wisconsin and others.

“When NCREPT first started, people were asking, “What’s going on in Arkansas?” Mantooth said. “Five years later, they know what’s going on in Arkansas.

“We’re easily in the top 10. This is a national-level strength.”

Of his programs’ graduates, Mantooth said, “They can work right here in the state if they want to, or they can go anywhere in the world because power is a universal problem.”

That’s a notion Southwestern Electric Power Company’s Mark Mobley said hasn’t been lost on power and electric companies.

“The development of engineering students for the power electronics industry, that’s what they bring from a utility standpoint – providing us with future engineers that are capable of upgrading the power grid,” said Mobley, a customer service engineer.

So even if it’s easy to get lost in Mantooth’s acronym-saturated world, it pays to remember he’s producing ideas and implementers that can be understood in an electrical sense.

“There’s a lot of output,” Mantooth said, “because there’s a lot of input.”