Looking for a 4th year Electrical Eng project idea

newie

Hi,

I am looking for a few ideas for my Honours Degree Electrical Engineering project in September. Last year was on Hydro and as next year is the big one so want to do something interesting and technical that will/could stand to me when applying for a job next year (if there is any).

I was thinking of something that would interest the ESB, like renewables, smart metering etc. Any ideas of past projects that may have been done or any links to sites would be gratefull.

Cheeble

Is that Electrical, or Electronic?

newie

Sorry Electrical, Ill edit the post

pauln

Grid tie inverters! They are really expensive at the minute (approx €1/watt). This may be down to the small market and production costs or the companies are just charging a huge markup. Either way the cost is a real barrier to larger scale integration of renewables into the grid.

If a cheaper/innovative design was produced then it could have large market potential.

up them Schteps

Newie, what college are you in? I think that energy from oscillating bodies(wave energy) could become big in a few years.

molloyzer

I did mine on the effects of distributed microgeneration on the national grid (voltage rise etc) in conjunction with smart metering which was quite interesting. ( a lot of simulations though)

I know that there was a pilot scheme proposed in areas of dundalk for the smart metering rollout but i'm not sure if it ever happened

I'd stay away from the wave stuff unless your mechanical knowledge is very good. Though thats just my 2 cents worth

Cheeble

Anything related to the introduction of renewables on the grid sounds like a good idea at the moment. Not just microgeneration, large scale wind farms, wave etc all have major implications.

I'd suggest choose some small, specialist corner of this field to give you a manageable project scale.

You could look at how baseload generation is used, or the effect of a wind turbine failure. A study of island grids might be interesting in this context.

But it really depends on what you're interested in. Choosing something because you think it will get you a job is a bad idea: much better to choose something because you want to do it. Employers can easily spot the difference.

Cheeble-eers

newie

Cheers for the ideas folks. what I was thinking of was to try and control the loads of a large building say a hotel for example through a Laptop. Where each room could be controlled seperatley and switched in and out to save power. The heating and cooling etc all controlled from one point. A Management system really.

What would ye think, would it be a decent project and how easy/hard to complete

Cheeble

They're quite common, you'd need to find an angle that makes it into a project rather than just looking at an off-the-shelf BMS, but that shouldn't be too difficult.

SparkyLarks

how about looking at the infrastructure requirements to deliver all the wind and wave energy from the west coast to the east coast where it is needed.

a very under discussed topic

Dardania

newie wrote: »

Cheers for the ideas folks. what I was thinking of was to try and control the loads of a large building say a hotel for example through a Laptop. Where each room could be controlled seperatley and switched in and out to save power. The heating and cooling etc all controlled from one point. A Management system really.

What would ye think, would it be a decent project and how easy/hard to complete

BMS' are quite common, and there are open protocol implentations also (KNX, BACNet...) which mean any vendor can supply equipment and interface with the rest of the building. I wouldn't re-invent the wheel there...

How about look at influencing buildings with knowledge of whats going on in the wider grid eg. ramping down fans country wide at peak times of the day whilst still delivering enegy to PCs? Maybe use a low-level communications protocol across the national grid to signal to buildings?