The Institute

The research projects at the PES cover a wide range of application areas and all basic forms of power electronic energy conversion, and are carried out at present by 19 PhD students supported closely by 2 Fellow Researchers, 1 Postdoc and Prof. Kolar. This also includes a research group focusing on advanced mechatronic systems. Currently 14 research projects are funded by industry or other partners which are contributing approximately 60% to the funding of the PhD students, where collaborations typically last 1 to 3 years. Negotiation and preparation of contracts and overall project monitoring is performed by an Industry Relations Manager with legal support by the ETH Transfer department. The administration of PES comprises apart from the secretariat, general administration (personnel and project accounting, ordering of components, and inventory), and computer systems administration also an electronics laboratory with latest equipment to support the PhD students in the construction of near-industry prototypes. Moreover, the PES utilizes the excellent infrastructure of the D-ITET central mechanical workshop for the manufacturing and rapid prototyping (3D printer) of various mechanical parts and complex geometries.

PES is endowed with 6 PhD research laboratories and an EMI laboratory for conducted emission measurements. It is equipped with the latest generation of AC, DC and medium-voltage power supplies, signal sources, and measuring and testing equipment including thermal imaging. The computer infrastructure is based on 15 compute-servers as well as laptops and PCs. The software packages available are the general scientific programs as well as FEM software packages for EM field calculations and multi-domain software platforms. Additionally, software tools developed by PES are utilized for circuit simulation and for the design of magnetic components in research and education. Further software modules are under development, which will be used for EM analysis and modeling of complex PCB geometries and parasitic couplings of EMI filter components, and the investigation of coupled electrical-thermal problems, respectively.