Power Quality Aspects for Switched Reluctance Motor Drive

Abstract

The recent advancement in solid state switching devices and its compatibility with high speed digital signal processors have motivated the interest in designing, controlling and analysis of switched reluctance motor drive. The main advantages of SRM, which popularizes its applications, are low cost, compact in size, high efficiency, high starting torque, high torque to inertia ratio, low maintenance and immune to shoot through faults. Due to its satisfactory operation at wide speed range, it is emerging as a potential candidate for a number of applications in industrial drive and domestic applications. newlineUsually the SRM is operated by a solid state power converter and needs unidirectional current supply for its proper operation. The major advantages of these converters are that it is free from shoot through fault because the semiconductor switches are connected in series with stator winding of SRM. Many converters are available for SRM drive but midpoint converter is a widely used converter which is free from shoot through fault, uses less number of switches, making it cost effective and also allows regeneration. The circuit configuration of this converter is based on the spilt capacitor type of connection, which must require the capacitor voltage balancing. This is a major issue. newlineIn a conventional SRM drive, an uncontrolled six pulse AC DC converter with large value of DC link capacitor is used to feed the SRM drive, but this configuration imposes non sinusoidal current component to the AC mains and surrounding equipments, due to uncontrolled charging of the DC link capacitor. Therefore the AC mains supply current is full of the harmonics with poor power factor and high total harmonic distortion. Hence to fulfill the requirement of international standard such as IEEE519 for improving power quality at AC mains, improved power quality converter are required at the front end of SRM drive. newlineThe research work focuses on the development and investigation of various front end power factor correction converters