High Efficiency and High Power Quality Electrical Power Conversion

The Navy’s Next Generation Integrated Power System (NGIPS) Roadmap depends on the conversion of medium voltage AC (4160 – 13.8KV) to DC for shipboard electrical distribution systems. Satcon’s medium voltage AC to DC converter topology supports the NGIPS architecture, allowing for galvanic isolation to provide ground fault isolation without the size and weight penalty of 60Hz transformers and improving power quality -- both the front end harmonic distortion and the backend ripple voltage. All this while significantly reducing size and weight and improving power quality and modularity as compared to current AC to DC distribution hardware. Input voltages up to 13.8kV are supported and a high frequency transformer topology provides increased power density, galvanic isolation, a more fault tolerant architecture, and flexibility to provide a variety of DC output voltages by the selection of the appropriate turns ratio in the output converter. In Phase II the hardware will include second order component effects and additional control techniques of the SGTO based converters, while demonstrating the high voltage performance relative to AC and DC power quality and transient response requirements. The modular construction provides flexibility to parallel modules and cabinets of modules to achieve zonal power requirements up to and exceeding 6MW.