A High-Performance Controllable DC Load

Electronically-controllable dc loads are used to test and evaluate dc power supplies, fuel cells and solar arrays and emulate variable dc load profiles in test-bench study of energy conversion systems in the labs. The desired characteristics of such loads include high accuracy, high speed of response to the electronic control signal, high fidelity, high power density and low cost. In this paper, a high-performance controllable dc load is introduced which features simple structure, scalability, fast response and low cost. The load can be used to test and evaluate single fuel cells, fuel cell stacks and solar arrays. The dc load can be programmed to operate in variable-resistance, variable-current or variable-power modes and emulate an arbitrary load profile. The performance of the proposed controllable dc load has been predicted analytically and verified through simulation.