Evaluation Engineering - 8

PROGRAMMABLE POWER

Sponsored by

EA Elektro-Automatik EA-PSB 10000 Series
bidirectional programmable power supply.

SPECIAL REPORT

SOURCES AND LOADS
OPTIMIZE POWER ACROSS
THE APPLICATIONS GAMUT
By Rick Nelson, Contributing Technical Editor
Whatever project you are working on,
power will be a key aspect. Whether
you have a battery powering a mobile
device or a wind turbine powering a smart
grid, you will need the ability to simulate
power sources and the systems they
power to make sure the two play well together. Fortunately, vendors offer a variety of programmable power supplies and
loads-including regenerative loads-to
help you achieve an optimal design. They
offer a variety of voltage and power levels
as well as flexible interface options.
EA Elektro-Automatik serves a variety
of applications areas, including conventional and electric vehicles, PV and wind
energy generation, and energy storage
(batteries and fuel cells), according to
Zeke Pietsch, applications and customer

EVALUATION ENGINEERING SEPTEMBER 2020

care manager. Pietsch said the company
leverages SiC high-frequency switching
technology as well as the latest FPGAs,
microcontrollers, and digital-to-analog
converters to develop programmable supplies and loads to serve such applications.

Supplying 10s of kilowatts
EA Elektro-Automatik's products include the EA-PSB 10000 Series bidirectional programmable power supplies.
"The PSB 10000, being bidirectional, fully
integrates a high-performance autoranging programmable power supply with a
regenerative, programmable electronic
load capable of 95% energy recovery,"
said Pietsch, adding that the series delivers 30 kW in a 4U chassis with 40-A
to 1,000-A and 60-V to 2,000-V ratings.

Furthermore, he said, the PSB 10000 also
has a hermetically sealed, water-cooled
option that dissipates 95% of heat into
the water circuit, with only 5% dissipating
into the air (conventional losses).
"In addition to the advanced arbitrary
waveform generator included, the PSB
10000 comes with battery-simulation
software," Pietsch continued, explaining that many thousands of test data sets
for lithium and lead-acid battery testing
were created using modeling software
to emulate real battery performance in
artificial environments for hardware-inthe-loop tests.
Keysight Technologies in June introduced the RP7971A and RP7972A 20-kW
regenerative power supplies. "The new bidirectional supplies are ideal for testing
energy storage and inverter/converter
electronics," said Bill Griffith, power
product marketing. "Traditional solutions convert dissipated power to heat.
Regeneration eliminates excessive heat
by returning energy to the grid."
For testing commercial string inverters,
Keysight offers the PV8921A and PV8922A
20-kW photovoltaic array simulators. "The
PV8900 Series offers up to 2,000 V and the
ability to test up to 12 MPPT inverters,"

http://www.elektroautomatik.us

Evaluation Engineering

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