The renewable
energy lab in the Electrical Engineering Program held a workshop on
programmable logic controllers (PLC) programming for electrical engineering
students. The goal of this workshop is to introduce the participants to the field
of industrial automation and the most popular controller used in this field,
which is PLC. The workshop starts first by explaining the motivation behind
using PLC over traditional relay logic control circuits. Then, the main
components and the principal of operation of PLC will be explained with the
focus on Schnieder PLC Modicon M241, which is the available setup for practical
training. Finally, the participants will be involved in a hands-on training
will they learn how to design a simple PLC program and how to diagnose it and
run it on the PLC.