Management of capacitor voltages in split-AC switched reluctance motor drives with power factor correction

Reduced switch count switched reluctance motor drives are among the technologies proposed to replace single-phase induction machines in industrial drives including the compressor market. The split-ac drive in particular can offer relatively high performance with half of the number of switches and diodes per phase as compared to the asymmetric bridge which is typically used in SRM drives. Its main disadvantage, however is that it relies on a split capacitor bus that must be properly controlled. This work proposes methods to manage both overvoltage at startup and voltage drift during normal operation, while maintaining near unity power factor.