IEEE Power Electronics Magazine - June 2014 - 30

PELS members, including those who
are unable to attend the conferences.
As a result, there will be a monthly
Webinar series geared toward students
and young professionals. The topics
will include both technical and nontechnical content ranging from hardware prototyping tips to finding a good
job or a mentor. Some of the best presentation winners at major power electronics conferences will also be invited
to present their work to the wider PELS

audience. This will help the younger
PELS members gain more exposure
and experience.
As the activities for young members have grown, so has the Student
and Young Professional Committee.
The current members include Texas
Instruments' Pradeep Shenoy, Katherine Kim from the University of
Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Jenn
Vining from Daimler, and Lingxiao
Xue from Virginia Tech.

There is still more room for
growth, and the committee is encouraging students and young professionals to get involved in organizing new
activities for young PELS members.
If you are interested in participating,
please check out the PELS Young Professionals Web page at http://www.
ieee-pels.org/membership/pels-gold.
The committee is always looking for
feedback or suggestions, so please
contact PELS if you have any ideas.

wireless charging research
activities around the world

he latest research activities
in wireless charging from research and development
(R&D) centers around the world are
highlighted here. Driven by plug-in
electric vehicles (EVs) and consumer
electronics, wireless charging is gaining momentum at research centers
worldwide. To get a glimpse of what is
happening at various centers, Burak
Ozpineci, group leader of Oak Ridge
National Laboratory's (ORNL's) Power
Electronics and Electric Machinery
Group, contacted a few researchers.
What follows is a summary of the responses to his survey.

Department of Electrical
and Computer Engineering,
University of Auckland,
New Zealand
Prof. Grant Covic reported that his
group has worked on wireless charging
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MPEL.2014.2319511
Date of publication: 20 June 2014

IEEE PowEr ElEctronIcs MagazInE

technology since 1989 and is a leader in
the field of high-power resonant inductive power transfer with applications
in industry and EV wireless charging.
They pioneered the means to control
power via decoupling of the secondary
(enabling multiple secondary windings to be powered on one primary
system seamlessly). In addition, his
group claims to have developed much
of the early mathematics describing
modes of resonance and bifurcation
phenomena when variable-frequency
supplies were in use to ensure efficient operation. Also, they proposed
many unique secondary controllers
and magnetic designs for materialhandling applications and automated
guided vehicles relative to single and
multiphase tracks to enable efficient
power transfer with wide tolerance
to movement.
Since the mid-1990s, Prof. Covic's
group has also pioneered various
lumped low-loss (high quality factor) single and multicoil magnetic

z June 2014

designs for EV charging of people
movers (specially designed to have
single-sided fields with low leakage). More recently, in the late
2000s, researchers focused on single
and multiphase designs to transfer energy wirelessly on roadways
and provide both motive power
and charging to moving vehicles.
The designs enable highly efficient
power transfer with wide tolerance
and low leakage, and all are able
to work seamlessly with proposed
stationary charging systems. These
designs are already being used or
evaluated for buses and cars by commercial partners and, more recently,
are being scaled back for use in lowpower applications.
According to Prof. Covic, the department holds patents for innovations in efficient power-supply design;
magnetic couplers, including the first
intermediate coupler for EV highways
proposed in the early 1990s; and secondary side controllers. Following

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Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Power Electronics Magazine - June 2014