The Future Energy Challenge (FEC) competition is an international student competition for innovation, conservation, and effective use of electrical energy. The competition is open to college and university student teams from recognized engineering programs from all over the world. Participation is on a proposal basis. It is sponsored by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), the largest professional organization in the world. The 2005 FEC competition focused on two topic areas; the USC team participated in the topic A challenge, which was to build a Single-Phase Adjustable Speed Motor Drive of the type used for home appliance applications, such as a washing machine. The stringent competition specifications were designed to stimulate innovations in motor and drive design. The goal was to design and build a machine with a low-cost target but with superior performance as compared to existing industrial solutions in terms of small size and weight, extended speed range, precise speed control, high energy efficiency, low input current harmonics, and reduced in-rush current at start-up.

Power electronics is the technical area within Electrical Engineering concerned with the efficient conversion of electrical power. In recent times the dramatic increase in oil cost and instances of power blackouts in various parts of the United States have put energy at the center of public debate. Alternative energy sources such as fuel cells, wind energy and solar energy are receiving serious attention. Interfacing these sources in an efficient and reliable manner to the power grid or to electric loads requires power electronics converters. Therefore, power electronics is a key enabling technology for all of these alternative energy sources. The Electrical Engineering Department at USC has a strong program in power electronics with several professors doing research in this area. They have a multi-million dollar research program sponsored by various federal agencies such as the Office of Naval Research of the US Navy, the National Science Foundation, and the Department of Energy.

Leveraging on this strong research program, a student team from the Electrical Engineering department entered the FEC competition. Over the past year the USC team under the guide of faculty advisors Dr. Antonello Monti and Dr. Enrico Santi designed, built and tested a motor drive that incorporated a number of innovative features such as:

Innovative single-stage power train design with reduced part count as opposed to conventional two-stage solution

As a result, the USC prototype exceeded the weight requirements for the competition: the 12 Lbs USC system weighted one third less than the competition target of 18 Lbs. No other team met this specification. It also had small size and the estimated cost was also low. A remarkable aspect of the USC team accomplishment is that during the crucial hardware development phase in the Summer of 2005 the team consisted of only two members, undergraduate students Adam Barkley and David Michaud. Each of the other teams had at least ten people working on the project.

The final phase of the competition took place in Chicago on August 15-17, 2005. An extensive set of tests on the motor drive was performed at MPC Products Corporation, including inrush current, speed command, loading, harmonics and endurance test under fan load.

Dr. Nicholas Nagel, Director of Electronics R&D at MPC Products Corporation and judge for the FEC competition, receives the USC motor prototype from David Michaud of USC to connect it to the test bench.


The USC prototype during the endurance test under fan load. In the background the motor prototype from the University of Belgrade, Serbia, can be seen.


David Michaud and Adam Barkley of USC hold the award plaque surrounded by the competition judges.