A Three-Terminal Ultracapacitor-Based Energy Storage and PFC Device for Regenerative Controlled Electric Drives

Most of modern controlled electric drive applications, such as lifts, cranes, and tooling machines, are characterized by a high ratio of the peak to average power. In addition, such applications have high demand for braking at the full rated power. In ordinary drives, the braking energy, which represents 30%-50% of the consumed energy, is dissipated on a brake resistor. Apart from this “energetic” issue, power supply interruption and the input current quality are two additional issues to be solved. A novel regenerative controlled electric drive based on an ultracapacitor as energy storage is presented in this paper. The ultracapacitor with an interface dc-dc converter is used to store and recover the braking energy. In addition, the dc-dc converter controls the rectifier current and reduces the drive input current total-harmonic-distortion factor down to 30%. Moreover, the dc bus voltage is boosted and controlled to be constant and ripple free regardless of the load and the mains voltage variation. In comparison to state-of-the-art solutions, the new solution has better performance regarding size, cost, and efficiency. The presented solution is theoretically analyzed and experimentally verified. The results are presented and discussed.