You have the power – but only Dr. Luo can maximize it
Spoiler alert: You personally use power-electronics equipment every day.
Your laptop, your cellphone, your dishwasher … “it’s everywhere,” notes Fang Luo, an Empire Innovation Associate Professor in Stony Brook University’s Electrical and Computer Engineering Department.
He would know. As director of the university’s Spellman High Voltage Power Electronics Laboratory, Dr. Luo is knee-deep in power electronics, the application of solid-state electronics to the control and conversion (from alternating current to direct current, or vice-versa) of electricity, and the many devices it powers.
The laboratory, a partnership between SBU and the Hauppauge-based Spellman High-Voltage Electronics Corp, opened earlier this year, taking a deep dive into emerging technologies focused on electrical conversion and control. That’s front-and-center for Spellman, which manufactures high-voltage power-conversion and X-ray products, and right in the wheelhouse for Dr. Luo, who earned his bachelor’s and PhD degrees from Huazhong University of Science and Technology in China, and a joint PhD at the Virginia Polytechnic Institute.
The former assistant professor in the University of Arkansas’ Electrical Engineering Department and one-time Ohio State University research assistant professor is a senior member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers and a member of both the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics and the American Society of Mechanical Engineers – all of which count power electronics among their top priorities.
If Stony Brook was to create a topnotch power-electronics program, Dr. Luo – who’s authored or co-authored more than 50 peer-reviewed conference papers, 20-plus journal papers and one book (“Advanced DC/AC Inverters: Applications in Renewable Energy,” CRC Press, 2017) on power electronics – was the right person to lead it.
“We are basically doing different designs for different circuitry, to improve their performance in different applications,” the scientist says. “The power line you use for your washing machine will be different than the power lines used in an aircraft, for instance.”
Aircraft factor heavily into Dr. Luo ’s work. He notes three “major projects” on his current agenda, the first of which focuses on the efficiency, reliability and safety of power electronics in future NASA aircraft.
Through NASA’s University Leadership Initiative led by University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Dr. Luo leads the effort designing mega power motor drives for big planes – capable of carrying 300 people or more – powered by fuel cells, which run on liquid hydrogen. Liquid hydrogen requires extremely low temperatures to minimize power loss, which creates difficult logistical puzzles, according to the researcher.
“If your power-conversion unit gets too large, you can’t seat that many people on the aircraft,” he notes. “We are trying to realize higher efficiency and high power-density conversion on board the plane.
“We’re targeting 99.95 percent efficiency – extremely high efficiency designs,” Dr. Luo adds. “This has never been heard of before, but we’re getting there.”
The second big flight-focused project involves modern electrical systems on commercial aircraft, with the Federal Aviation Administration funding research that addresses reliability and safety concerns.
“We always hear that going ‘all-electric’ is a good thing for the environment, but what about reliability?” Dr. Luo asks. “What if you’re mid-flight and something fails?”
To address this very real concern, the FAA-funded work focuses on the creation of small platforms that work within modern-electronics architectures. Already one year into a three-year project, Dr. Luo and his team – including contributions from Raytheon Technologies, the University of Illinois and the University of Arkansas – are “modeling different failure models and understanding the root cause of these failures in electrical aircraft.”
“The goal is to provide answers to these equations and provide accurate models of new platforms, one by one,” he says.
The third major project on Dr. Luo’s busy itinerary has nothing to do with aviation. Funded by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Electricity, Dr. Luo describes a “green modernization effort,” aiming for more reliable and efficient “modular architecture” for next-generation power grids.
Led by researchers at Tennessee’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, the project pursues new standards for low-carbon power converters, providing “higher reliability and more efficient power conversion,” according to Dr. Luo.
“If successful, this project will eventually provide a huge boost to the power-electronics industry,” he says.
All of the projects have one thing in common: the cutting-edge resources provided by the Advanced Energy Research and Technology Center (AERTC), Dr. Luo’s home base and a “huge, comprehensive platform in terms of environment and industrial connections.”
“It’s a collegial environment for me,” the scientist notes. “You collaborate with people like Slowa Solovyov and Yacov Shamash on different projects, and David Hamilton is definitely a good leader – he provides so many different opportunities and opens so many doors.
“They don’t just open the facility and say, ‘Go use it,’” Dr. Luo adds. “They create opportunities to engage with different partners and different collaborators.”
That leadership proved essential during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, especially since power-electronics work doesn’t lend itself to remote connections. Hands-on, in-person science is a must.
“What we are doing is not just simulations,” Dr. Luo notes. “We need to have people there making it work.”
With everything from supply-chain efficiency to in-person availability grinding down, the pandemic seriously threatened the power-electronics research. But the AERTC and its leadership team rose to meet that challenge, according to the scientist, who applauded some all-hands-on-deck resourcefulness between the center and outside industry.
“If Company A comes to me and says, ‘We’re interested in this but we don’t have the resources to support it right now,’ we are able to say, ‘Don’t worry about, we can do it anyway with the help of Company B and other support from the university and federal government, and you can catch up,’” Dr. Luo says. “Eventually, we’re all helping each other – and in fact, this is the only way I can see that we can really bring back the economy when the pandemic is fully gone.”
With his team of 12 graduate students working day and night shifts, many of the Spellman Laboratory’s efforts are now back on schedule – and there are “a lot of good things shaping up for Long Island,” according to Dr. Luo.
“We have worked very hard to get everything into place,” he says. “It will still take time, but the [Spellman High Voltage Power Electronics Laboratory], supported by the university and working together with the AERTC, will eventually become another Center of Excellence for New York State, focused on electrification and power conversion.
“The AERTC is always building new energy sources for a sustainable future, and always creating new cooperation with new educational programs and training efforts,” Dr. Luo adds. “Together with my colleagues, we’re creating a big part of a sustainable energy future.”