Affordable Electrical Accumulator Unit

Military aircraft power systems face increasing electrical loads from new technologies and weapons systems. Many of these loads are pulsed in nature, which can degrade power quality on the bus and exceed generation capacity within the aircraft for short durations. Electrical Accumulator Unit (EAU) technology has been previously demonstrated as a promising way to increase overall capability, but these systems have faced barriers to adoption due to size and cost.   Safe, FAA-certified, Commercial-Off-The-Shelf (COTS) energy storage devices are readily available between 12 V and 48 V, most commonly 28 V nominal.   In many cases, a platform may already have a 28-V battery for flight-critical avionics systems, that could be leveraged to support the higher-voltage aircraft bus when not in use.  The power requirements of typical EAU applications are very high, but the actual energy needed is often low, due to the duty cycle of the pulsed loads.  PC Krause and Associates (PCKA) believes that the ability to leverage 28-V batteries (either existing or additional) can enable adoption of EAU capability and therefore additional electrical power capacity on a wider range of aircraft platforms than traditional EAU technology approaches. The key enabler to leveraging low voltage energy storage devices is PCKA’s modular bidirectional dc/dc converter technology.  Utilizing high switching frequencies and wide-bandgap semiconductors, these dc/dc modules allow high-bandwidth control with high power density.  In this program, PCKA will develop and demonstrate Affordable EAU technology utilizing these dc/dc converter modules that leverages off-the-shelf low-voltage energy storage devices to enable future platform adoption for a wide range of potential aircraft platforms while interfacing to existing power architectures.