Abstract
Since DC Motors are common components in engineering projects that involve process control, it is necessary for any student in this area to understand their concepts, construction and applications. This paper focuses on a series of Laboratory Experiments that were carried out in an Entry Level Unit of the Integrated Master Degree in Electrical and Computers Engineering of the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Porto, named Project FEUP. In this class, mandatory for all students, they learn to how use these motors, from basic concepts to the estimation modeling. The paper presents the developed kits that students use, the simplified model and examples of the experiments performed in some classes.

Abstract
IEC 61850 is a standard for the design and operation of electrical Substation Automation Systems (SAS) that defines how data may be transferred among Intelligent Electronic Devices (IEDs). The defined data models can be mapped into application protocols, such as SV or GOOSE, which may run upon high speed Ethernet LANs bridged by IEEE 802.1Q compliant switches. The communication system must cope with the timing requirements associated to protective relaying strategies. Given the time constrained nature of SAS applications, a thorough analysis of its timing behavior is required. In this paper, we propose an analytical model for the timing assessment of SV and GOOSE message exchanges in an IEC 61850 process bus. The proposed model allows the communication timing assessment, by analyzing the response time of each message stream of the SAS. This feature is an advantage for the expansion of the SAS, as it allows the evaluation at design time of the maximum number of IEDs that can be supported by the underlying communication system. The results from the proposed analytical model were validated for a typical IEC 61850 communication scenario, both through simulation and through an experimental assessment with IEC 61850 compliant equipment.

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This paper summarises the joint efforts of a multinational group of six undergraduate students cooperating within the European Project Semester (EPS) conducted at the Instituto Superior de Engenharia do Porto (ISEP). The EPS@ISEP initiative, made available as a part of the Erasmus+ international students exchange programme, employs the principles of problem-based learning, facing students with—albeit downscaled—real-life scenarios and tasks they may encounter in their future professional practice. Participation in the project initiative outclasses most of the traditional courses through a wide spawn of its learning outcomes. Participants acquire not only hard skills necessary for an appropriate execution of the project, but also broaden their understanding of the approached problem through detailed scientific, management, marketing, sustainability, and ethics analysis—all in the atmosphere of multicultural and interdisciplinary collaboration. The team under consideration, based on personal preferences and predispositions, chose the topic of vertical farming and, in particular, to design a domestic indoor gardening solution, appropriate for space efficient incubation of plants. The paper portrays the process, from research, analysis, formulation of the idea to the design, development and testing of a minimum viable proof of concept prototype of the “Vereatable” solution.

Abstract
Transmission Expansion Planning (TEP) is traditionally carried out based on long-term forecasts for the peak load, which is viewed as the worst-case scenario. However, with the increasing renewable penetration, the peak load may not be longer the only worst-case to quantify new investment requirements. In fact, high off-peak load scenarios combined with low renewable generation can originate unforeseen bottlenecks. Besides, as TEP is a time-consuming problem, relaxed decision-making processes are often proposed in the literature to address the problem, however there is no guarantee that optimal planning has been achieved when some costs in the decision-making process are neglected. In this sense, this paper proposes a novel methodological framework to ensure that the system is sufficiently robust to overcome conditions with high electricity demand and low renewable energy, furthermore, this paper also presents a broad comparison between the common decision making processes adopted in the TEP literature aiming at providing a more insightful understanding of its impact on the total system cost. The optimization model, which is based on a multi-stage planning strategy, considers an AC-OPF model to enforce operational constrains, including the N-1 contingency criterion. The proposed model is tested through an evolutionary algorithm on a large test system with 118 bus. The uncertainties inherent to wind-solar-hydrothermal systems, demand and the life cycle of generation and transmission equipment are duly considered in the simulations. The results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed methodology in providing solution plans able to meet the demand even in scenarios with high off-peak load and low renewable generation, unlike the planning carried out considering only the peak load. Besides, the results also demonstrate that relaxed decision-making models may generate insufficient expansion plans.