SEC Lectures – a great success in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic
During 2020, SEC alongside some of our partners arranged a five-part series of lectures in a course called SEC Lectures. The course provided an overview of electromobility starting from storage of charging, powertrain and on-board systems all the way to social aspects, interaction with the electric grid and infrastructure, giving an introduction to the areas as well as to different tools for modelling.
In early February this year, Gabriel Domingues (BorgWarner) and Francisco Marquez (Theme leader, theme 2) repeated part 2 of the course. We asked Francisco Marquez some questions about their day.
Why did you decide to repeat Part 2 of the SEC Lectures?
Even if the attendance to the first occasion exceeded our expectations by far, topping at 700 + attendees, there were clearly people who couldn’t participate. This time the initiative came from our industrial partners, who appreciated the quality of the lectures the first time, and contacted us to see if we could arrange a reprise of the lecture in “Electrical machines, drives and charging systems” for those who were not able to attend the first time. And sure we did!
How did the lecture go?
We think it was a success! The attendance was somewhat lower, given that many of our colleagues at the industry had already participated the first time, but even so, it topped at nearly 100 people. We gave an thorough introduction to electrical machines and power electronics, touching upon the fundamental physics behind their operation as well as more practical issues related to their applications in vehicles, and we finalised the day with an introduction to charging: how, how fast, where, for how long, and for how much we shall charge our electric vehicles.
What sort of response did you receive from the participants?
The schedule for this lecture is really packed, since we attempt to cover a very wide area in just a few hours. However, we like our lectures to be dynamic, organising a couple of quizzes between modules and encouraging the participants to ask questions. Based on these questions, their relevance and complexity, I’d say the audience was engaged and interested in the topics we brought up. After the lecture we received several messages with mostly positive feedback!
The most common suggestion for improvement was to either increase the duration or remove some of the material, so that we don’t need to keep such a high pace the whole lecture. But at the same time, we received a number of messages with suggestions for additional material that we could add to the lecture to make it even more complete! I think we’ve reached a good balance there.
Anything else you would like to share about this lecture?
We started these SEC lectures as a way to help our industrial partners keep updated, despite the difficult situation that the COVID-19 pandemic brought along. But I think we never expected them to have such a large impact! All SEC Themes have done a great job condensing the most important aspects of their activities into an introductory lecture, and the whole series gives a good overview of what the Centre is about.
Particularly, I’ve attended the lectures from all themes, and I encourage you all to do the same next time we arrange them, if you haven’t done so yet!
About the Lecture
Repetition of Part 2: Electrical machines, drives and charging
Introduction to Electrical machines, drives, and charging gives the participants an overview of the key components of an electric drivetrain.
Being the ultimate goal, the conversion of the electrical energy stored in the battery into mechanical forces on the wheels, we will describe all the necessary power conversions and associated hardware that make this possible.
Lecturers:
Francisco J. Márquez-Fernández, LTH
Gabriel Domingues, BorgWarner