HIGH QUALITY AC POWER WITH TRIAC INVERTER

Barsoum, N.N. & Png, F.T.C. Curtin University of Technology, Miri, Sarawak, Malaysia Tel: 6085 443821 Fax: 6085 443837 Email: nader.b@curtin.edu.my ABSTRACT
Single and three phase inverters has become a crucial power electronic converter since the use of three phase ac signal is necessary in power generation, transmission as well as distribution system. Apart from that, the application of three phase inverters in renewable energy system has made the inverters performance the main issue considered by engineers. Hence, it is a must to generate an ac signal with low ripple, less distortion and higher power factor. The ultimate aim for this research is to achieve a pure sinusoidal single and three phase ac signal at the output side with a low noise. Parameters identification is established to meet the wanted specifications of the size and power, and to obtain a selected ac signal which can perform different frequency levels, with less ripple, harmonics, and high efficiency. Lastly, Single-phase inverters with voltage cancellation accept a constant dc source and produce an output of a square-wave like ac voltage. The output does not use PWM and therefore have a square-wave like output [1,7,9]. These inverters have the combined characteristics of the two previous inverters. The voltage cancellation only works with single phase inverters, not three phases. In this research, three kinds of inverters, phase-shifted square wave inverter, bipolar inverter and unipolar are design and simulated by using PSIM. All these three kinds of inverters characteristic are studied. The unipolar inverter is chosen for implementation, since it proves high performance with the wanted aims. The practical design and the results of its output were compared with the simulated one.

2.

SIMULATION

1.

INTRODUCTION

Power electronics area is growing extensively in industrial, transportation, residential, commercial [1,7,9] and aerospace application when the power semiconductor devices was first introduced [2] in 1950s. Nowadays, Power electronics become an important field in electrical engineering as the increase demand of using power electronics devices such as inverter, converter and power supplies in daily life. With the advent of the renewable energy such as Photovoltaic (PV) Home system, inverters are needed in order to convert DC to AC. Power electronics mainly deals with the efficient conversion, control and conditioning of electrical power by static means from its available input form into desired electrical output form. Many power electronics converter using switching mode converter because the power semiconductor devices can be considered as controllable ideal switches that can turn on and off according to the corresponding gate signal. Popular power devices include Gate-turn-off Thyristor (GTO), insulated-gate-bipolar transistor (IGBT), Metal-oxide-semiconductor field effect transistors (MOSFETs) [3,9] and MOS-controlled Thyristor (MCT). These Power electronics devices can be used for switching-mode single-phase DC-AC converters and it has been widely used in critical applications such as uninterrupted power supply systems and AC motor drivers. Among various control techniques [6] Pulse Width Modulation (PWM) technique is the most effective one that is commonly used to regulate the magnitude and frequency of the converters output voltage. Moreover, the inverter that designed nowadays became smaller in size and cheaper in price [4,7,8]. For example, when a system is to be built and used in rural areas where there is no power supply around, solar energy will be chosen to power the AC devices. During this time, an inverter is needed to convert the DC produced from the Photovoltaic (PV) arrays into AC to power up the devices. On the other hand, the inverter can be utilized in other applications such as Uninterrupted Power Supply, speed control of threephase induction or synchronous motors and others.

2.1. Three-phase inverter The power circuit Fig.1 consists of three pairs of C-MOSFET switches (P-MOSFET and N-MOSFET). In C-MOSFET configuration, the switches will operate at different states with the same input gate signal. This will reduce the gate control signals in the power circuit to three instead of six. If all the switches are N-MOSFET, NOT gate will be needed to invert the gating signal so that the pair of switches does not operate at the same time. Voltage ripples are shown in Figs.2,3

Fig.1: Three Phase Inverter with Low Pass Filter

Fig.2: Output Voltage Ripple for Unipolar Inverter

The inductor and capacitor values are important in filtering the output voltage. Besides that, with proper L-C filter value, the output voltage ripple can be reduced. Due to the flexibility of PSIM, the value of the L-C filter is obtained by trials and errors. With this method, the values of the L-C filter are altered until the most preferable output is acquired. The optimum value of L-C filter is obtained in PSIM as: L = 120mH, C = 4.7F

The overall performance of unipolar inverter is better than the bipolar inverter. For the bipolar inverter, with the same switching frequency (1050 Hz), the ripple is greater. Thus, the larger value of capacitance is used to reduce the voltage ripple. This causes the power factor of the bipolar inverter to be lower. 2.2. Single phase inverter

Fig.3: Output Voltage Ripple for Bipolar Inverter The Switching frequency for both unipolar and bipolar inverters is being varied from 150 Hz to 1050 Hz in order to conduct further studies on these inverters.
TH vs Sw D itching Frequency 50% 45% 40% 35% 30% 25% 20% 15% 10% 5% 0% 150 300 450 600 750 900 1050 Unipolar B ipolar

Fig.5: Schematics Diagram of the Single phase Bipolar Inverter Modulation ratios for gate signals of Fig.5 are given by:

ma =

V control 0.8 = = 0 .8 Vtri 1

mf =

f s 5000 = = 100 f1 50

Transformer parameter: R s = 0.01225

Ll = 1.225 10 3 H

Sw itching Frequency (H z)

Fig.4: Plot of THD vs Switching Frequency for both Unipolar and Bipolar Inverters From Fig.4, the plot shows that the THD for bipolar inverter is greater than unipolar inverter especially when the switching frequency is low. The main performance difference of unipolar and bipolar inverter is summarized in Table 1. Unipolar Bipolar 0.44% 1.84% THD (%) 0.98 0.87 Power Factor 12.25% % Voltage Ripple 5.72% 98% 86% Efficiency Table 1: Summary of Unipolar and Bipolar Inverter

Fig.6: Schematics Diagram of the Single phase Unipolar Inverter Utilization ratio
VT = V d , max = 12V I t = 2 I load ( rms ) pri = 2 48.097 A = 68.02 A q = no of switches = 4 The power generated by the inverter is Vo1 I o , max = P0 = 365W Therefore, the unipolar Switch utilization is : u= Vo1 I o , max qVT I t = 365 = 0.11 4 12 68.02

t =

V0 Ts 2V d

Blanking time = 0.1425 (1 / 5000)

as the input frequency, the Triac Bridge will only produce output voltage during every positive cycle of the voltage source. Hence, a half wave cycloconversion is performed

2 12 = 1.1875 10 6 s

Bipolar Switch utilization ratio

u=

V0 I 0 max 320 = = 0.099 0.10 qVT I T 4 12 66.67

2.2044 (1 / 5000) 2 12 = 1.835 10 5 s

Blanking time =

Table 2 shows the summary the 3 inverters simulation results Square-wave phase shifted inverter 12V 27.31A 327.72 W 221.86V 1.32A 292.86W 0.89 89.36% 80.32% Bipolar inverter Unipolar inverter

Fig.7: Single-phase triac bridge cycloconverter

Input voltage 12V 12V Input current 43.81A 31.00A Input power 525.72W 372W Output voltage 240.12V 242.25V Output current 1.33A 1.53A Output power 319.35W 370.6 Power factor 0.60 0.99 Efficiency 60.74% 99.64% THD of PWM 51.91% 31.35% THD of load 41.96% 5.98% 3.89% voltage THD inductor 41.98% 6.76% 6.57% current Voltage ripple N/A 0.024V rms 0.024V rms Current ripple N/A 5.82A rms 0.015A rms Table 2: Comparison of all three inverters simulation .As can be seen from table 2, the unipolar inverter had the highest efficiency and lowest voltage and current ripple. For the square wave phase-shifted inverter, the voltage and current ripple were not found due to the software limitation

Fig.8: Gating pulse for half wave triac cycloconverter at fo = 30 Hz and = 90

3.

AC-CONVERTER

3.1. Single-phase Half Wave Triac Cyclcoconverter By using a triac bridge, the output obtained can be either half wave or full wave depending on the gating pulses generated. In this section, a half wave triac cycloconverter will be discussed. Fig.7 shows power circuit for single-phase triac cycloconverter. Gating signal, Vg1, is used to control triac T1 and T2 while Vg2 activate T3 and T4. Vg1 and Vg2 corresponding = 90 are given in Fig.8. In order to perform half wave cycloconversion in Triac Bridge, both the gating signals frequency is set as the source frequency. In fact, the gating signals in half wave triac cycloconverter is identical to the gating signals for full wave thyristor cycloconverter. T1 and T2 will produce a positive output while T3 and T4 generate negative output. The output voltage of the half wave triac cycloconverter is shown in Fig.9. Since the gating signal is set

Fig.9: Output voltage for triac cycloconverter at fo = 30Hz and = 90 Measuring THD, PF and DPF The THD, PF and DPF are plotted and measured in PSIM. The THD, PF and DPF plots for half wave triac cycloconverter at fo = 30Hz and = 90 are shown in figures 10, 11, 12. The THD, PF and DPF at steady state for half wave triac cycloconverter with different delay angle at fo = 30Hz are evaluated in Table 3

and this shows that half wave cycloconverter generates a high distortion and low power factor

3.2. Single-phase Full Wave Triac Cycloconverter In order to achieve a full wave cycloconversion by using a single triac bridge, the gating signal generated will be different from the one generated for half wave cycloconversion. With a single triac bridge, the gating signal required to perform full wave cycloconversion is generally more complicated. For instance, to perform a conversion from 60Hz to 30Hz, the gating signal takes the form as shown in Figure 13. This gating signal is achieved by setting different operating frequencies of the alpha controllers in Fig.7. In the case of obtaining a 30Hz output frequency, the operating frequency of alpha controller 1 and 2 are set to 40Hz and 120Hz respectively

Fig.10: Half wave triac cycloconverter THD plot for = 90 at fo = 30Hz

Fig.13: Gating pulse for full wave triac cycloconverter at fo = 30Hz and = 90
Fig.11: Half wave triac cycloconverter PF plot for = 90 at fo = 30Hz

Fig.14: Full wave triac cycloconverter output at fo = 30Hz and = 90

Fig.12: Half wave triac cycloconverter DPF plot for =90 at fo =30Hz

Delay Angle () 0 30 60 90 120

THD (%) 98.79 101.48 113.26 131.33 149.91

PF 0.74 0.72 0.64 0.51 0.41

DPF 1.00 0.99 0.94 0.84 0.73

One should note that the gating pulse required to perform full wave cycloconversion with a single triac bridge depends on the output frequency. The gating pulse for different output frequency can be achieved by the switching on and off of the triac pairs (T1, T2 and T3, T4) in Fig.7. Unlike the half wave triac cycloconverter, the triac pairs are activated during both the positive and negative cycles of the voltage source. When = 90 at fo = 30Hz, the output voltage waveform is shown in Fig.14. There is a difference between the outputs for full wave triac and thyristor cycloconverter. Measuring THD, PF and DPF Since the plots of THD, PF and DPF for full wave triac cycloconverter takes the same shape as the half wave triac cycloconverter, only numerical values are shown in this section.

Table 3: Summary of THD, PF and DPF for half wave triac cycloconverter

Table 4 summarizes the THD, PF and DPF at steady state of a full wave triac cycloconverter with respect to different delay angle. Hence, it is obvious that the overall performance of a full wave triac cycloconverter is better than a half wave triac cycloconverter. Delay Angle () 0 30 60 90 120 THD (%) 5.30 25.00 69.83 98.34 139.64 PF 0.99 0.96 0.88 0.75 0.48 DPF 0.99 0.97 0.90 0.84 0.68

4.

PERFORMANCE OF TRIAC CYCLOCONVERTER

4.1. Effect of Low Pass Filter It is important to obtain an ac power with fewer ripples. Hence, low pass filter (L-C filtering) is introduced to the power circuit. The L-C filter shown in Fig.17 is located at the ac output side of the triac cycloconverter power circuit. The value of inductor and capacitor is the most critical part in the filtering design. Due to the flexibility of PSIM, the value of L-C combination is obtained by trials and errors. The advantage of this method is one can vary the values of inductor and capacitor until the desired outcome is obtained. A cycloconverter with 30Hz output frequency, the value of L-C combination is obtained in PSIM as: L = 0.5mH, C = 100F By applying these values, the full wave triac cycloconverter output voltage when = 60 is shown in Fig.16. It can be seen that the output voltage is smoothen and the discontinuity of the output is eliminated. Hence, filtering is necessary in order to achieve the desired outcome.

Table 4: Summary of THD, PF and DPF for full wave triac cycloconverter 3.3. Comparison of Half Wave and Full Wave Cycloconverter Fig.15 shows the THD and PF versus the delay angle for various cycloconverters. It is obvious that the half wave of triac cycloconverter is not practical to be implemented due to high distortion and low power factor.
160 140 120 T HD (%) 100 80 60 40 20 0 0 30 60 90 Phase Delay (Degree) 120 150 Thyristor full wave cycloconverter Triac full wave cycloconverter THD Vs Phase Delay Triac half wave cycloconverter

Fig.16: Full wave triac cycloconverter output voltage at fo = 30 Hz and = 60 Filtering will affect THD and PF of a cycloconverter. Thus, it is important to choose an appropriate inductance and capacitance. In this example, the THD and PF after filtering is 59.45% and 0.81 respectively. The THD and PF at = 60 before filtering was 69.83% and 0.88 respectively. Thus, one should note that although THD is improved but PF of the converter drops if L-C filter is applied. Using this result as reference, with a suitable filter, the THD will be less than 59.45% while PF will be higher than 0.81 if the delay angle of full wave triac cycloconverter is set lower than 60. 4.2. Output Voltage Ripple The percentage ripple of the output voltage must be considered in designing a good cycloconverter. This is given by: % ripple = Vo, max Vo min 100% = 20.2 19.1 100% = 5.5% 20 Vo 4.3 Efficiency In order to justify the efficiency of the full wave triac cycloconverter, watt meters are used to measure the input and output power of the power circuit. Fig.17 shows the watt meters connection in triac power circuit.

Power Factor Vs Delay Angle 1.2 1 P ow e r F ac t o r 0.8 0.6 0.4 0.2 0 0 30 60 90 Delay Angle (Degree) 120 150 Triac half wave cycloconverter Triac full wave cycloconverter

Thyristor full wave cycloconverter

Fig.15: THD and PF vs Phase Delay Plot It can be seen from Fig.15 that the THD and PF of the converter is unacceptable if the delay angle is adjusted beyond 60. Hence, by setting = 60 as the standard for the design, the performance of triac full wave cycloconverter is explored.

By using the average function in SIMVIEW, the efficiency of the power circuit is constructed, in Fig.18, as: Efficiency, = Avg ( Pout ) 100% = 93% at steady state.
Avg ( Pin)

4.

CONCLUSION

Fig.17: Filter and watt meters connection

Fig.18: Efficiency plot for full wave triac cycloconverter

5.

CONVERTER WITH HIGHER OUTPUT FREQUENCY

One should note the cycloconverter presented in this paper only produces ac signal with frequency lower than the input signal. Basically, there are two types of cycloconverters depending on the methods of commutation. These are natural commutation (phase-controlled) and forced commutation. The natural commutation cycloconverter produces output frequency lower than the source frequency. While, the forced commutated cycloconverter can generate output frequency that is higher than the input frequency. However, the forced commutated circuit is more complex and the output waveforms are poor, hence, it is not practical to perform forced commutated cycloconversion. In conclusion, to obtain a higher output frequency than the source frequency, a rectifier-inverter (ac-dc-ac) is favorable. Fig.19 shows rectifierinverter output voltage waveform at 120Hz .

Design and implement single and three phase inverter with sinusoidal output voltage waveforms is achieved. Electric and electronic equipments are generally hazardous if they are not handled carefully according to their requirements. Therefore, in an electrical engineering workplace, various forms of accidents and mishaps are prone to occur anywhere and anytime without prior warning, and may cause many lives to be endangered. Thus, as engineers, it is our responsibility to ensure the safety of others as well as oneself as this would reflect our attitude towards the engineering profession where human lives are always at stake. Among these kinds of inverter, the unipolar inverter has the lowest current and voltage ripple, which was 0.1% of the fundamental voltage and current. The efficiency of the unipolar inverter is 99.64%. The output voltage obtained from the unipolar inverter was 242.25V (rms), which is slightly higher than the input 240V (rms) and the output current was 1.53 A. The voltage and current generated was reasonable in many appliances. Cycloconverter with triac bridge is also investigated. The output PWM generated by the Interface Controller board was reasonable with the simulation results but the output voltage was different from the simulation. This inverter design has brought a lot of practical knowledge, which cannot learn from the theoretical such as optocoupler isolation needed to isolate the CLIC board [5] and the inverter. Several important points must be considered in the practical stage. For instance, safety of humans and equipments must be considered. In the practical stage, an isolated type of triac is used in order prevent any unnecessary damages. Understanding of the rating of all the equipments is a must to prevent any undesirable faults. REFERENCES [1] Mohan, N., Undeland, T.M. & Robbins, W.P., 2003, Power electronics: converters, applications and design, John Wiley & Sons, Inc. [2] Daniel W. Hart, 1997, Introduction to Power Electronics, Prentice Hall [3] Nasser.K, 2004, MOSFETs vs IGBTs : Which is Brtter?, Retrieved: September 10, 2005 [4] Sedra. A. S, Smith. K.C (1998), Microelectronic circuits 4th edition, The Oxford Series in electrical and computer engineering [5] Maynard, C.A., 2001, Curtin Laboratory Interface Controller (CLIC), School of Engineering, Curtin University of Technology. [6] Narain, G. H. and Laszlo, G., 1999, Understanding Facts, The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. New York Pulse width modulation, 1998, IEEE, [Online], Retrieved: September 16, 2005 [7] Reitsma, C., An introduction to Inverters and Applications [8] Spasov, P., 1999, Microcontroller Technology, The 68HC11, Third Edition, United States of America: Prentice Hall. [9] Toshiba Field Effect Transistor Silicon N Channel MOST Type 2SK2232, 1998, Toshiba Semiconductor, [Online], Retrieved: August 12, 2005

Fig.19: Output waveform at 120Hz

[10] Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 9/2005