Graduation Semester and Year
Summer 2026
Language
English
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy in Electrical Engineering
Department
<--Please Select Department-->
First Advisor
David Wetz
Second Advisor
Alexander Johnston
Third Advisor
Wei-Jen Lee
Fourth Advisor
Qilian Liang
Abstract
The demand for electricity has never been higher with the rising employment of consumer electronics, electric vehicles, and data centers. Modern data centers demand extreme continuous power and on top of this demand, they have an even higher transient demand that must be managed. Batteries are often used to back up the electric grid and maintain operability in the event of an outage. All these electrical loads have high heat losses that must be thermally managed. In the case of transient electrical loads, it is not ideal to employ thermal systems rated for continuous cooling at the levels reached transiently. A more optimum solution is to employ a compact thermal energy storage (TES) solution that is in essence a thermal battery. As electrical loads are developed, new methods are needed to test and evaluate them before they can be deployed in the field. The work discussed here presents the design, fabrication, and testing of a 2 MW transient thermal load emulator that uses commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) tankless water heaters as resistive heating elements. The resistive elements couple directly to a liquid cooling loop, in which the TES is employed, and accepts multiple input source voltages including 480 VAC three-phase and 1000 VDC. Each individual heater has a power rating on the order of 27 kW, comparable to modern data center racks. The system is con parallel flow loops rated at 600 GPM each, interfacing with two salt-based thermal energy storage units. Subscale characterization results are presented along with the design and partial fabrication of the 2 MW unit.
Keywords
Thermal Load, Load Bank, Thermal Energy Storage, Resistive Heating, Contactors, Constant Power Load
Disciplines
Electrical and Computer Engineering | Power and Energy
License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.
Recommended Citation
Oksanen, Brent R., "Design, Fabrication, and Experimental Verification of a Two-Megawatt Electric and Thermal Load Emulator" (2026). Electrical Engineering Dissertations. 2.
https://mavmatrix.uta.edu/electricaleng_dissertations2/2
Comments
This work was sponsored by General Technical Services (GTS) through Prime Contract: DOTC-19-04-4637; OTA 2019-372. Mod. 2. The opinions and findings are those of the authors and not necessarily those of GTS or the prime sponsors at the Department of War and the Operational Energy – Innovation Office.