Introduction to Electric Power Systems

The notes included here have been written over about thirty years of teaching this material. They were intended for students with some, but not necessarily a deep background in electromagnetics and circuit theory. Initially the notes included three-wire electric power, including standard circuit theory: balanced networks amenable to one-line diagram analysis, simple ways of handling unbalanced situations using delta-wye transforms, etc. and then symmetrical components. The chapters on electromechanics and electric machines were intended to supplement the textbook by Fitzgerald, Kingsley and Umans. Eventually they became comprehensive enough to stand alone.

The reader will note the absence of a chapter on power electronics. The early version of the notes had such a chapter, but it covered only phase controlled rectifiers and inverters, and was too limited to be of general use. As an interim measure, I gave students in the class a fine chapter written by my colleague Steven B. Leeb.

In 2009, I decided that it was time to convert these notes into a textbook, and by the time 6.061/6.690 was taught in 2011 that book had been published.

Kirtley, James. Electric Power Principles: Sources, Conversion, Distribution and Use . Wiley, 2010. ISBN: 9780470686362.

The book has some additional material, including a chapter on power plants and their primary sources of energy and, finally, material on power electronics as one would use for inverters and drives. The approach to electromechanics and electric machines is a bit more unified than it is in these notes, and the book also includes a number of problems that could be used by instructors.

Chapter 7 is not available on MIT OpenCourseWare. The steel data in Chapter 8 are courtesy of the Electric Motor Education and Research Foundation and are used with permission.

CHAPTERS: 7 · TOPICS: Power electric motor drives