Dear Sir/Madam,

I am a Design Engineer working at Bloom Energy, Bangalore, India

(http://www.bloomenergy.com). I have two years of experience working in the
design and development of a solid oxide fuel cell based distributed power
system. I have completed M.Sc in Power Electronics at Department of Electrical
Engineering, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India
(http://www.ee.iisc.ernet.in). My graduate thesis work is on filters for high power
grid-connected converter applications. I have a strong theoretical background
and extensive practical experience in design, analysis and control of power
converters.
I wish to apply for the PhD program at the Wisconsin Electric Machines and Power
Electronics Consortium. I am interested in areas of renewable energy, distributed
generation, electric vehicle technology and semiconductor technology. I am
excited by real world challenges in power design that involve not just power
electronics but mechanical design, material engineering and thermal design. A
chance to work in any of these areas and solve the energy issues of the future is
my inspiration for pursuing a PhD degree.
I am presently working in Bloom Energy (2009-present) which is a startup based
in Sunnyvale, California, USA. I was involved in the design and development of a
25kW grid connected and grid independent inverter. I was also involved in the
development of custom instrumentation for the control and monitoring of a 35kW
Solid Oxide Fuel cell. I was a part of the team that recently completed full system
evaluation and production release of the new Bloom Energy Server, a 200kW
distributed power system. I have worked with manufacturing teams in India,
Taiwan and Mexico for the successful transfer of design data for manufacturing
production. I am presently working on the development of a 75kW inverter and
25kW PFC among other projects to improve the efficiency and power rating of
our DC-DC and DC-AC converter products.
My graduate thesis work (2006-2009) was on design of filters for high power
grid-connected converter applications. My contribution was design of efficient,
compact higher order low pass filters to remove the switching harmonics at the
point of interconnection to the grid. Power loss in individual filter components
was modeled by analytical equations and an iterative process was used to obtain
the most efficient design. This project was funded by National Mission on Power
Electronics Technology, under Ministry of Communications & Information
Technology, Government of India and implemented at Department of Electrical
Engineering, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India. This thesis was
awarded The Hay Medal for Best M.Sc Thesis, 2011.
My undergraduate project work (2006) was design and control of non-isolated
switched mode power converters. The aim of the project was to understand the
operation and control of basic switching converters. The converters were
designed to be inexpensive and easy to assemble with focus on understanding
the operation. The project was a learning experience in basic power electronics,

and I learnt things like soldering, winding inductors and transformers, PCB layout
and digital controller design. This hardware is currently used as a laboratory aid
to explain concepts of dc-dc converters.
The WEMPEC group of the University of Wisconsin-Madison is familiar to me
through the large number of high quality publications from this group each year.
The research areas of the group like renewable energy and distributed
generation are aligned with my interests in power electronics. My graduate thesis
advisor Dr. Vinod John and my mentor, Prof. V.Ramanarayanan at Power
Electronics Group, Indian Institute of Science are both alumnus of WEMPEC. The
impetus for this application is my determination to become a better engineer and
to understand and appreciate the intricate details of design that differentiate a
good power designer from a great designer. I feel that working for an advanced
degree in one of the best power electronics research groups in the world is the
best way to broaden my horizons and extend my knowledge and experience.
-Best Regards,
Parikshith Channegowda