Thermoelectric cooling for power electronics circuits: Small signal modeling and controller design

This paper discusses the modeling and application of Thermoelectric Cooling (TEC) in power electronics circuits, with the focus on the small signal modeling and controller design. In this paper, the small signal analysis based on a comprehensive thermoelectric model is carried out and the results show that, the whole system is a non-minimum-phase system and lack of damping to the disturbance in the control variable. A closed loop controller is designed to solve the stability issues and realize dynamic temperature control. To verify the effectiveness of derived small signal model and designed controller, an 8 kW prototype has been built and experimental results are presented in this paper.