The target of this project is to design and implement a complete eco system for the electrical vehicles, where the electrical vehicle owners can swap fully charged batteries by visiting a battery swapping station, once their EV battery state of charge is depleted. This project involves prototype mechanical system design, hardware implementation, implementation of the IoT platform to work with mobile devices to collect battery information, design of an optimization algorithm to maximize the profits earned in trading energy to the grid at the battery swapping station.

PUBLICATIONS:  

Karunarathne, E., Wijesekera, A., Samaranayake, L., Binduhewa, P., & Ekanayake, J. (2022). On the implementation of hybrid energy storage for range and battery life extension of an electrified Tuk-Tuk. Journal of Energy Storage, 46, 103897.

As of today, Electric Vehicles (EVs) have become an attractive solution for the problem of air pollution in cities and the ever depleting petroleum sources. Almost all EVs have a battery, a power converter and an electric machine. When considering a conventional drive cycle of an electric vehicle, time periods of acceleration, braking and constant speeds can be observed. The highest power demand from the machine will occur during the acceleration and the power demand from the battery will be comparatively lower when the EV is running at a constant speed. In order to provide the high power required for acceleration, batteries with high capacity must be used, which also increases the weight of the vehicle while occupying a larger space.A solution has been designed, simulated and experimentally verified by using a supercapacitor bank along with the battery bank to provide power to the EV. The supercapacitor has been used to provide pulse power demand during acceleration and sink power spikes caused during regenerative braking operation, as it is a high power density and low energy density device. This allows the battery to cater the average power demand without current spikes. Thus a battery with smaller capacity can be used and also the life of the battery can be extended.

PUBLICATIONS:  

SE. Karunarathne, L. Samaranayake, P. Binduhewa and J. Ekanayake (2019).Simulation of a Three-Port Bi-Directional Converter for an Electric Vehicle Application, 14th Conference on Industrial and Information Systems (ICIIS), Kandy, Sri Lanka, 2019, pp. 220-225

Lead tinning is one of the crucial parts of manufacturing electronic components such as inductors and instrumentation transformers. Currently it is done manually exposing the worker to lead fumes which is carcinogenic. In this project, it is intended to develop an industrial robot manipulator to replace the manual labour. This project is carried out on the MATLAB / SIMULINK realization of the PUMA 560 robot manipulator for position control. The focus of the work is on 1. robot manipulator analysis, 2. design of individual joint controllers, and 3. analyze the controller performance in the SIMULINK environment. The controller can handle each joint individually without affecting the rest of the joints as expected. The developed model is able to reach any point within the work cell in 3D space when the reference coordinates of the end arm tool and its yaw, pitch and roll angles of it are provided.

PUBLICATIONS:  

Gunasekara, S. R., Samaranayake, L., & Harischandra, N. (2021). Design of a Computed Torque Controller based Joint Controller for PUMA 560 Manipulator. In 2021 IEEE 16th International Conference on Industrial and Information Systems (ICIIS) (pp. 353-358).

Smart meters are the heart of the distribution system in smart grid. Smart meters are used to collect consumption data from end users as well as send feedback signals and control commands to the end user. A Research and Development(R&D) unit of Ceylon Electricity Board (CEB) has manufactured a smart meter to collect consumption data. Under this grant a team from Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering (DEEE), University of Peradeniya (UoP) came to an agreement with CEB to analyze and improve the developed smart meter and associated Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI). The tasks were divided into three categories namely; Head End System Development coordinated by Dr. M.A.U.S. Navaratne;Wireless network and Communication coordinated by Dr. M.B. Dissanayake; AMI security coordinated by Dr. S.N. Karunarathna. Funding: Ministry of Power and Renewable Energy

PUBLICATIONS:  

Lakmini, A., Liyanage, L. P. M. A., Hamsa, S., Kumara, A. L. A. P. A., Navaratne, M. A. U. S., & Herath, A. (2021). Semi-Automated Tool for Location Identification to Improve the Solar PV Penetration in Sri Lanka. In 2021 IEEE 16th International Conference on Industrial and Information Systems (ICIIS) (pp. 122-127).