Method and apparatus for electronic power control

Abstract

The method of the invention in one aspect involves electronic power control by varying the amplitude of an electrical power supply voltage, independent of frequency, whereby the output frequency will always be the same as the input frequency. An electrical circuit apparatus for accomplishing this function in a preferred embodiment is also disclosed herein. The preferred circuitry of this aspect of the invention uses four solid state switches, such as IGBT's, four diodes, an inductor, input and output filters and novel controlling circuitry. The controller apparatus and methods of the invention may be used to implement all otherwise conventional converter types, buck, boost, and inverting (and duals of these) versions to obtain different regulating characteristics, including galvanic isolation of the output from the input. The inventive methods and devices may be used in power factor correction, voltage and / or current harmonic filtering and neutralization, line and load conditioning, control of power transfer between two power grids, and programmable control of surges, sags, dropouts and most other voltage regulation problems.

Description

[0001] This is a Continuation-in-Part of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09 / 802,809 filed Mar. 8, 2001, which is a division of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09 / 241 / 831 filed Feb. 1, 1999, now issued as U.S. Pat. No. 6,229,288, which is a Continuation-in-Part of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 08 / 371,512 filed Jan. 11, 1995, now issued as U.S. Pat. No. 5,747,972.[0002] The invention relates to the field of electrical power conversion and control, across a wide range of current and voltages; more particularly, it relates to method and apparatus for electronically implemented power control, more particularly, those implemented with switch mode power conversion techniques.[0003] An electrical power conversion circuit is a circuit in which electrical power is changed so that a power source with a voltage or current can serve a load requiring a predetermined voltage or current. In switch mode conversion circuits and power conversion techniques, power is typically changed from a suppl...

AI Technical Summary

Problems solved by technology

Most manufacturers of conventional PFC systems use an elaborate and expensive array of optional harmonic "traps" that have to be customized to a specific installation.

In most respects the waveform is identical to the previous printout, but the passive damper clearly contributes to greater power consumption as the input current increases to 4.5 ARMS, without significant improvement in the waveform over active damping alone.

Secondly, the tests were not conducted in a worst case resonance scenario; in an industrial plant with far less "clean" power, multiple motor and PFC resonant combinations typically create fuse blowing and PFC capacitor failures, and have much greater need for the kind of PFC demonstrated here.

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