Values that lead
our company and
products
Do by your own
We believe that it’s a must for students to implement all the laboratory activities by their own. Our Power Labs Ecosystem Product family members are designed in a way that no matter how students will implement the actual experiments, it will be very secure for them. This grants the lab instructors and professors authority to allow for the students to really implement everything from A to Z, and not just look how lab instructor is implementing the actual experiment.
Make your Mistakes
Students should be able to do trials, do mistakes, face wrong-working or non-working situations, localize the problems, resolve the problems and achieve working conditions. In order to enable this core value our Product family members are designed in a way to have Fail Safe Operation, meaning that the system will withstand all wrong terminations and control. It equipped with all necessary circuit breakers, residual current breakers, microprocessor-based overcurrent protections, short circuit protections, etc.
Define your Trainer
In order to provide best scalability and enhance the project-based learning, the Systems should be open and reconfigurable. Students should be able to Define its Functionality. In order to enable this core value, our Product family members are designed in a way not to have hardware defined functionality but to fully integrate its behavior with software, like in smartphones, where te same hardware implements totally different functionality depending which application was opened calculator or calendar or web browser. This allows the students to really define the functionality of the trainer.
Learn by Feeling
We are in the age of Industrial Revolution so remembering by heart what lab instructor showed or what professor tolled and try to repeat the same in industry is not an option anymore. Each day in industry we are facing new challenges, new problems which needs new solutions. Students’ education cannot be based on repeating; it should be based on deep understanding which associated with feeling of the topic itself, of the problem itself, of the solution itself. In order to enable this core value our Product family members are designed in a way that Students learn by feeling and understanding and not by memorization.
In order to enable this core value our Product family members are designed in a way that researchers are not limited to the functionality that is already provided but they can implement new functionalities to enhance their research capabilities. All these values are based on value-driven approach and they will help to have industry-based research and will minimize the risks of making mistakes in the real field.
Research Focused Core Values
Open Platform
The trainers are provided with an open-source codes developed in LabVIEW graphical programming language. This allows the users to modify the existing or add new monitoring and control algorithms to implement new functions and analyses. The Graphical Programming Langue bridges the barriers and not requiring for the User to be an expert in computer science and in text-based programming languages. It allows engineers to be focused on their specific research activities and still be able to develop complex monitoring and control algorithms without deep knowledge on programming.
Software Defined Functionality
Each Power Labs Ecosystem platform is a software defined system, which means the trainers will behave as per the software, reprogrammed by the user. Same as any other software defined platform like smart phones, whereas devise behaves like calculator, or like organizer, or like PC, or like phone depending on which application is running at a moment. This adds extra flexibility for research activities.
Software Platforms Integration
Although Power Labs Ecosystem Trainers are developed in LabVIEW graphical programming environment, it still has ability to integrate with readymade or newly developed software sections using MathWorks or Python or other software platforms.
Leading Technology Integration
In order to provide even wider access for the research, Power Labs Ecosystem platforms has an integration with leading technologies like Augmented Reality, Artificial Intelligence, Industrial IoT and Mixed Power Microgrids.
Benefits and advantages
- PLE trainers have multiple use cases:
- Education – The trainers can be used for teaching purposes to be able to learn the theory and implement the experiments.
- Custom Experiments – Students can use it to create new custom experiments, implement course works or graduation projects on them, so those are perfect fit for Project Based Learning.
- Research – The trainers can be used as research platforms for investigation of different phenomenon in in-lab environment, develop new monitoring and control algorithms.
- Trainings – The trainers can be used to train industry operators to develop their skills.
- Integration – The trainers are from the same product family so it is possible to investigate each discipline separately or they can be interconnected to each other forming bigger systems like microgrids.
- The trainers use real (but small scale) components, to make the trainers to be as similar to real power plants as possible. This means after studying on our trainer, the student can easily understand any real power plant structure.
- The trainer components have transparent enclosures to make them and the internal processes to be visible during operation and make the experiments more deductive, thus keeping students exited and involved during the process.
- The software has user friendly, easy to use and nice-looking user interface with graphical animations to be more attractive for the students.
- The trainer implements power measurement and quality analysis on the reconfigurable myRIO and RIOsys platforms. It allows to have not only the RMS values of voltage, current, frequency, power factor etc., but as well as the real-time vector diagram, real-time sine waveforms of the voltages and currents, which makes much easier to understand how the components operates and how they affect into each other and power network itself thus making the system self-explanatory for students.
- The trainer is modular, meaning the components are free to move and can be interconnected by the students as per the need for each experiment. This allows the students to get fully involved in the process of interconnection of the components and understanding the aim and functionality of each of them. All the interconnections of components are done by students based on the straightforward instructions in the user manual thus students have better visibility and understanding of the entire system.
- Comprehensive and well-structured user manuals are provided for students and instructors. Each experiment has the following sections: Lab Objective, Prelab (theory associated to the experiment), Prelab Assignments (questions to the theory), Application Software Description, Step by Step Instructions, Experiments. Following all these sections the student will easily get a clear understanding of the aim of the experiment and the results he gets.
- In order to provide better security for the students and eliminate the risk of shock, we use 12V AC and 24VDC, so even if students make wrong connections the trainer is still safe and will not harm them. In addition, our components have residual current circuit breakers and overcurrent circuit breakers thus any short circuits or wrong terminations by the students will be handled by the system.
- Each trainer is compatible with other trainers of Power Labs Ecosystem™, so the customer will be able to get other trainers like traditional and renewable power generation, transmission and distribution trainers and operate them synchronously together having a smart microgrid system.
- The myRIO and RIOsys have state of the art technical specs and capabilities like real-time operating system, and reprogrammable FPGA.
- The system is software defined and fully open, meaning the LabVIEW source codes of all software components will be provided. This will add flexibility of adding custom labs to the trainer. The professors will be able to investigate the internal functionality and algorithms as well as be able to define new experiments, functionality and behavior.