News and Activities
News and Activities
November 1, 2018
Dr. Adel Merabet has been awarded an Engage Grant of $25,000.00 from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) for the project Virtual Test Bed of Solar Microgrid for Testing Predictive Energy Management System Algorithms tin collaboration with Green Power Labs, Dartmouth, NS, Canada.
June 1, 2018
Dr. Adel Merabet has been granted a contract, of $ 50,000.00, from Novatec Braids, Yarmouth, NS to replace the actual control system of the Capstan rope testing machine and develop a new monitoring interface using LabVIEW.
May 2, 2018
Former MSc student (Labib Labib) won the 3rd place in IEEE Industry Application Society Student Thesis Competition 2018 (Non-PhD category) for his MSc thesis "Control system for dual-mode operation of grid-tied photovoltaic and wind energy conversion systems with active and reactive power injection" under the supervision of Dr. Adel Merabet.
April 30, 2018
Dr. Adel Merabet has been awarded a Discovery Grant of $140,000.00 from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) for the project Control Systems for Renewable Wind and Solar Photovoltaic Energy Integration and Smart Microgrid. The objectives include the development of different configurations, control systems and energy management to integrate the renewable generators into the main grid and the operation as a smart microgrid.
December 7, 2017
The conference paper "Design, Optimization and Control of Standalone Solar PV/Fuel Cell Hybrid Power System" by C. Ghenai, T. Salameh and A. Merabet received the Best Paper Award. The paper was presented by Dr. Adel Merabet in the 5th International Renewable and Sustainable Energy Conference (IRSEC17), Tangier, Morocco, Dec. 4-7, 2017.
September 2017
Dr. Adel Merabet received $5,000.00 from the Industrial Research Assistance Program (IRAP), National Research Council Canada. The research team (V. Bachhao, L. Labib) works on an industry project to investigate modelling tools to build a microgrid based solar system for the industrial partner Green Power Labs, Dartmouth, NS, Canada.
September 2017
Dr. Adel Merabet received $5,000.00 from the Industrial Research Assistance Program (IRAP), National Research Council Canada. The research team (V. Bachhao, L. Labib) works on an industry project to design a charge controller for battery charging from the DC source. The project is conducted for the industrial partner Jaza Enegry Inc., Halifax, NS, Canada.
September 2016
Dr. Adel Merabet received $25,000.00 from Productivity and Innovation Voucher Program (Tier 2), Innovacorp, NS. The research team (V. Bachhao, L. Labib) works on an industry project to develop NI Compact Real-Time I/O system (cRIO) for vibration analysis and LabVIEW SCADA interface for fault detection and diagnosis in rolling bearing elements. The project is conducted for the industrial partner MachinaMetrica, Halifax, NS, Canada.
September 2015
Dr. Adel Merabet received $25,000.00 from Productivity and Innovation Voucher Program (Tier 1), Innovacorp, NS. The research team (M.A. Islam, V. Bachhao, L. Labib) works on an industry project to develop a system for vibration measurements in rolling bearing elements. The project is conducted for the industrial partner MachinaMetrica, Halifax, NS, Canada.
October 1, 2014
Dr. Adel Merabet has been awarded an Engage Grant of $25,000 from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) to develop a hybrid wind-solar experimental system with battery storage using Opal-RT Real-Time HIL/RCP Laboratory. The proposed system consists of a photovoltaic conversion system connected with a wind turbine emulator for hybrid operation, where the generated power will be shared between a load and a storage system. Adequate control and power management systems will be developed to ensure the proper functioning of the hybrid system.
The project will be conducted with OPAL-RT Technologies Inc. from Montreal, Quebec.
March 21, 2013
LCSM participated in Saint Mary’s Research EXPO-2013
Laboratory of Control Systems and Mechatronics (LCSM) participated in Saint Mary’s Research EXPO-2013 on March 21st. Dr. Merabet and his graduate research group highlighted their ongoing research, laboratory facilities, recent publications and success stories. Vignesh described his work on wind-diesel hybrid energy systems, while Aminul demonstrated his methodologies in developing solar-wind hybrid energy systems. Recently LCSM received a real-time embedded controller from the National Instruments (NI) for advancement in their research. During the expo, they exhibited the new ‘NI-cRIO system’ along with the servo motor and a power electronic interface that has been developed in their lab. Dr. Merabet is expecting to get more advance equipment for further research in wind energy and control systems. LCSM research team at SMU is working in collaboration with Wind Energy Techno-Centre (QC), Royal Military College (ON), Dalhousie University (NS) and Quanser Inc. (ON).
Dr. Adel Merabet (centre) with his master research students Aminul Islam (left) and Vignesh Rajasekaran (right).
October 17, 2012
Engineering professor, Dr. Adel Merabet, received $173,226 for research aimed at developing control systems in wind energy. The funding from the CFI Leaders Opportunity Fund and the NSRIT will allow the purchase of state-of-the-art equipment for research in wind energy. Through experiments with this infrastructure, Dr. Merabet and his student researchers will develop high-performance control systems capable of drawing the most power possible from wind energy. The technology developed at Dr. Merabet’s research laboratory is transferable to other renewable energy sources such as solar, tidal and ocean energy.
“Renewable energy is a critical source of energy,” says Dr. Merabet. “Extracting the maximum possible power at all wind speed levels is of utmost importance. Only then we can have efficient use of the equipment and available energy sources.”
June 1, 2012
Dr. Adel Merabet has been awarded an Engage Grant of $22,279 from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) to improve a laboratory-scale experimental wind turbine for education and research in renewable energy. In this project, a power electronic interface will be designed and integrated into the wind turbine in order to allow the implementation of control strategies for operation at all wind speed regimes. The upgraded wind turbine will be an open-architecture system, suitable for real-time multivariable control design and implementation, to facilitate R&D in wind energy. The project will be in collaboration with Quanser Inc., ON, Canada.