Instantaneous Power Control Within an Advanced Power Generation Center for More-Electric Aircraft Applications

This article presents an instantaneous power control (IPC) to regulate the power flow of a back-to-back converter (BTB converter) within an advanced power generation center (APGC) for more-electric aircraft applications. The APGC essentially is composed of two power generation channels (each channel is with a permanent magnet generator driven by two different engine shafts and an ac/dc converter) with a BTB converter connected in between. The BTB converter allows power transfer between these two channels and thus two different shafts of an aircraft engine. Control of the power transfer was achieved using the phase current synchronization (PCS) method where current flowing through the BTB converter is controlled to be in phase with that of one generator within the APGC. In this article, we propose an improved IPC technique. Compared with the previously proposed PCS method, the IPC method enables independent control of active power and reactive transferred from one channel to the other. The IPC also allows improved dynamic response in power control and elimination of tedious tuning of control parameters. The effectiveness and performance of the proposed IPC method are compared with those of the PCS method in terms of power control within the APGC in both simulation and experiments.

Automated summary

This article presents an instantaneous power control technique for regulating the power flow of a back-to-back converter in an advanced power generation center for more-electric aircraft applications. Compared with the previously proposed method, the IPC method allows independent control of active and reactive power transfer, improves dynamic response in power control, and eliminates tedious tuning of control parameters.