Working Student Efficient Industrial Monitoring – Edge-Power Demonstrator in Hamburg bei NXP Semiconductors

The System Innovation Team works in a multitude of innovation projects with national and international partners from industry and academia. One of these is the Edge-Power project. The project is about a system concept and demonstration of the Edge-Power System, which:

• is an efficient edge computing platform for different industrial process monitoring use cases;

• processes sensor data close to where the data is generated in the field, to reduce volume of cloud data transfers and associated energy consumption;

• draws its power consumption from renewable energy harvesters combined with smart energy storage as far as possible, to reduce mains grid energy consumption;

• adapts its energy consumption dynamically dependent on the available power budget;

• provides efficient compute with hardware-based AI acceleration, to support increasing complexity of industrial monitoring algorithms.

Part of the demonstrator will be a microgrid, that provides the system with power and manages the energy flows. The microgrid consists of an actual solar panel, a small battery storage and a backup mains grid supply. An energy module will be monitoring the energy flows, estimating the battery state and report this information up to the remaining Edge-Power System. The demonstrator concept includes outdoor use in sunlight, as well as indoor use, where the solar panel (for demonstration purposes) is powered with a strong artificial light source, that is controllable by the demo user with a dimmer.

Tasks:

• Implementation of the microgrid on hardware and software level, which is able to supply the Edge-Power system with power (~30W) and power status information

• Selection of suitable hardware modules for the charge and discharge controllers, Maximum Power Point Tracker (MPPT) and smaller electrical components like sensors

• Wiring of selected modules & components and assembly to enable system tests

• Testing of: Artificial light + solar panel setup, battery charge and discharge process, concurrency of power flows from grid supply and harvester path

• Software implementation of battery state of charge estimation (e.g. coulomb counting)

• High level software logic to en-/disable charge & discharge controller and grid supply

• Integration of energy module (hardware is provided a project partner), potentially porting of associated software and merging with own implementations

• (Optional if of interest) work can be done on communicating power status information via OPC UA to the remaining system and securing the communication via a secure element

Profile:

• Student of a master course in electrical engineering or related or bachelor students in 5th/6th semester with enough expertise

• Solid practical experience and understanding of electrical circuits and components

• Fundamental knowledge of electrical behavior of solar panels, battery cells and power electronic converters

• Ideally practical experience with power electronics like DC/DC converters, charge controllers, power supply circuitry

• Programming skills in C, preferably experience in embedded software development (debugging, embedded IDE)

• Good knowledge in Windows and PC tools

• Knowledge on Linux, OPC UA, Security & Cryptography and talent in craftsmanship are a plus

• Creative and innovative mindset, good team player, pro-active and able to work independently

• Extension of contract or conversion into thesis/internship topics is possible

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