Electrical and Electronics Engineering involves designing, controlling and maintaining the electrical equipments. Some of the project areas of electrical field are power generation, power system equipment maintenance and handling, industrial control and robotics, power electronics and energy systems. Therefore, this article gives a brief explanation of top 10 innovative electrical projects for engineering students.

Top 10 Electrical Projects for Engineering Students

1. GSM based Substation Monitoring and Control System

This project aims to acquire various substation parameters like current, voltage, temperature, power factor, etc., remotely via GSM communication. Thus, the remote operator can analyze these parameter values and take corresponding control action. A user can remotely operate the substation equipments like circuit breakers, isolators, relays, buzzer alarms, and so on.

GSM based Substation Monitoring and Control System

Various blocks of this circuit operation are shown above wherein a microcontroller accepts the inputs and correspondingly controls the outputs. The controller periodically sends the input parameters to a remote GSM mobile through the GSM networks. Similarly, this allows the control signals that are sent from the operators to control the substation equipment.

2. Zigbee Based Solar Powered Forest Fire Detection and Control System

The idea of implementing this project is to detect and prevent the forest fire remotely by using a Zigbee communication. The entire transmitter circuit is located in forest with different sensors like smoke and fire detectors, which are powered with solar-panel system. The embedded circuitry in the transmitter circuit collects processes the data and sends the data to a remote PC through the Zigbee communication module.

On the receiver side a Zigbee-transceiver-based PC receives these signals and correspondingly alerts the fire engines and also actuates the fire protecting equipment in the forest remotely.

3. Android Based Electrical Appliance Control

This is an advanced way of controlling home appliance from a conventional manual switch pressing system. It uses an Android mobile with a user graphical interface application in it. The control circuit is attached to a number of devices to be controlled through a relay mechanism with a Bluetooth communication module.

Android Based Electrical Appliance Control

First, this Android mobile has to pair with the receiver side Bluetooth modem; once it is paired with the modem, user can send control signals to corresponding appliance to control it. At the receiver side, microcontroller manages the all the actuators for different loads depending on the control signals from the user.

4. Photovoltaic Solar Power Generation with Maximum Power Point Tracking

This system considerably minimizes the number of panels required to generate the electric power so that it reduces the photovoltaic array system cost. As the sun is not constant at one place, and by fixing the solar array at one fixed place, maximum power generation is not possible. Therefore, this system locates the maximum-power-generating point with the MPPT controller.

Photovoltaic Solar Power Generation

This system uses a quadratic equation-based algorithm that calculates the quadratic function corresponding to the maximum power point. Program-based software executes algorithm and correspondingly controls the DC converter to adjust the output voltage.

5. PLC and SCADA Based Traffic Control System

This smart traffic control system uses Programmable Logic Controllers (PLC’s) and SCADA HMI for monitoring and controlling of traffic signals. This system is quite useful in high-traffic-density areas, toll gates and other high-end-parking areas.

This is a centralized control of traffic system where it collects the several places traffic conditions remotely through communication medium and this information is monitored using SCDA HMI. Therefore, synchronizing the traffic at different junction roads is possible with this system. And, also depending on the traffic density at different junctions, it controls the traffic light through remote operation.

6. Minimizing Penalty by Engaging APFC Unit for Industries

This project improves the power factor by a set of capacitors connected in parallel with the inductive load. Due to the lagging load in industries, power factor becomes abruptly low and results in bearing penalty imposed by the electric-utility companies. So this proposed system improves the power factor by switching the capacitors based on the value of power factor.

Minimizing Penalty by Engaging APFC Unit for Industries

This circuit is implemented with Zero Voltage Switching (ZVS) and Zero Current Switching (ZCS) sub-circuits. Thus the obtained voltage and current zero positions of these circuits are used for calculating the time difference between them, and correspondingly the power factor is calculated. Thus, depending on the value of the power factor, the capacitors are connected across the load.

7. Closed Loop Control of Brushless DC Motor

The purpose of implementing this circuit is to run mechanical loads at desired speeds by designing a closed-loop system for brushless DC motor. Closed loop operation uses a feedback system to compare the actual speed with the desired one.

Closed Loop Control of Brushless DC Motor

It allows a user to enter the desired speed from a matrix keypad. A control circuit receives this information, compares the actual speed sensed by the speed sensor and correspondingly sends the PWM signals to the motor.

8. Automatic Room Light Controller using IR Sensors

This project employs a mechanism with which room lights switch on when a person enters the room and switch off as the person leaves the room. In addition, it also displays the number of persons entering or leaving by means of LCD. With this automatic operation, the electrical energy can be saved.

Automatic Room Light Controller

In this system, two sets of IR LED and IR sensors are connected to the microcontroller to detect the persons exiting and entering the room. The microcontroller is programmed in such a way that by receiving the signals entering from the IR sensor, it turns the lamp with a relay mechanism and also increments the counter. Similarly, for the exit sensor signal, it turns off the lamp and decrements the count which is also displayed in the display.

9. Home Automation System Using Arduino Microcontroller

Home automation system is a centralized control of HVAC (heating, ventilation and air conditioning) and lighting appliances. This system uses Arduino development board with attached Bluetooth communication for remote controlling of home appliances.

Home Automation System Using Arduino Microcontroller

At the transmitter end, a graphical user interface application allows the user to send on/off commands to the receiver where the loads are connected. An Arduino board operates loads through Opto-isolators cum TRAIC arrangements by receiving commands from the user cell phone.

10.Electronic Soft Start for a 3-Phase Induction Motor

This project is designed to reduce the starting current of a three-phase induction motor, thereby providing smooth start. There are several conventional methods used for starting the induction motor. But, all these are more costly and have some loopholes as well, so this solid state method control provides an efficient starting control.

Electronic Soft Start for a 3-Phase Induction Motor

This uses six silicon-controlled rectifiers connected in twos across the three-phase induction motor (here a set of lamps are used to represent the coils of the three-phase induction motor). Thus, the control unit sends triggering signals to Transistors at the start of the induction motor.

These are the top 10 innovative ideas in electrical engineering compare to different application areas. If you want any technical help to implement these ideas in a practical approach or some more new project ideas in electrical engineering, you can leave us a comment in the comment section below.