In recent years several catastrophic power systems blackouts have occurred worldwide. Various reasons have been declared for these failures. Economical limitations due to power system restructuring restrictions, inadvertent operation of protective relays and inefficient design of conventional load shedding schemes are of the most important reasons causing these blackouts. In fact, due to both e...

We present a concept of a wetting defect of continuously variable strength based on electrowetting, along with a capillary force sensor adapted for the characterization of macroscopically heterogeneous surfaces. Patterned electrodes submerged under an insulating layer are used to generate potential wells for drops of electrically conductive liquids on the solid surface, with a well depth that s...

We have proposed that the gap junctions between amphibian blastomeres are comprised of voltage-sensitive channels. The kinetic properties of the junctional conductance are here studied under voltage clamp. When the transjunctional voltage is stepped to a new voltage of the same polarity, the junctional conductance changes as a single exponential to a steady-state level. The time constant of the...

The resistance in series with the membrane capacitance in the giant axon of the squid Loligo pealei was measured using potentiometric probes that exhibit absorbance changes proportional to the voltage across the plasma membrane proper. The method relies upon the fact that a voltage drop across the series resistance produces a deviation in the true transmembrane voltage from that imposed by a vo...

An important technique used for the grading of voltage drop along high voltage ceramic insulators is to provide some surface conduction to bleed off accumulated surface charge. We have used metal ion implantation to modify the surface of high voltage ceramic vacuum insulators to provide a uniform surface resistivity of order 10 Ω/square. A vacuum arc ion source based implanter was used to impla...

This paper presents simplified predictive current controller for 3-ph PWM voltage source inverter connected to the utility grid via filter inductance. By controlling inductance voltage drop, the inverter voltage and hence the injected current can be controlled. The proposed predictive control technique operates with constant switching frequency using space-vector modulation (SVM). In each switc...