Page 13 - Power Electronics News - December 2020

Smart Energy Smart Energy

One example is when Chris Henze was working first in a long series of experiments aimed at opti-

on his Ph. D at the University of Minnesota under mizing digital control in power supplies, expanding
the direction of Ned Mohan. Chris published some the scope of opportunities for the DSP.
interesting parts of his work at PESC in Toulouse in
1985. In this work Chris was using a microprocessor During the following years semiconductor man-
and was switching at a reasonable frequency for a ufacturers introduced many power controllers
non-isolated dc-dc converter of that era. with built in digital functionality with different
architectures. Although there was some exist-
In his paper he identified issues like quantization ing I/O communication, the launch of the Power
and the need to dither to get adequate PWM res- Management Bus (PMBus), standardizing com-

olution. The application presented by Chris Henze mands to monitor and control a power controller
is one among many that are representative of the is considered by power designers a major step
evolution from pure research to commercially towards a new level of Smart Power.
feasible applications based on microprocessors.
Figure 2: Smart Power operation in Smart Factory with machine-to-machine communication.

In the late 1990s TI contributed to develop the SMART ENERGY STORAGE FOR A From huge cranes requiring high energy levels a huge variety of power solutions. Often stan-
first fully digitally controlled UPS, based on the SMART POWER when lifting heavy loads, in electrical vehicles dalone, powering specific items of equipment,

digital signal processor C2000. Using a DSP to digi- If digital power technology made it possible to helping to boost performance when accelerat- power supply performances have benefited from
tally control the switching and power management optimize power switching performance and to ing and storing energy back when decelerating new technologies and there is no doubt that digi-
of a UPS system was the first practical application control the power supply in every possible way, and braking, to micro-supercapacitors built into tal power associated with the latest generation of
for digital power. This real-life application was the the growing demand for intelligent power systems portable equipment, they are silently contribut- power semiconductors and magnetics have made
integrated within demanding industries having ing to a new level of Smart Power when transient it possible to package more power into a small-
complex loads e.g. repetitive peaks and regenera- energy storage comes into the loop. er footprint. However, to make a factory truly
tive energy require ‘smart energy storage’. ‘smart’ whereby energy consumption is optimized
Combining the benefits of digital control and to match load demand, that is not enough and
First commercially introduced by Nippon Electric supercapacitors make it possible to develop very additional technology is required.

Corporation in 1978, Supercapacitor technolo- advanced power systems (Figure 01), able to dy-
gymade an impressive progress throughout the namically manage peak energy demands, reducing
following years, today benefiting from nanotech- the impact on the grid as well as guaranteeing FROM SHELF TO TRUCK
nologies that make it possible to create huge a longer life time for strategic components and If we consider a typical smart factory (figure 02),
capacity storage in smaller packages. industrial equipment. By having the ability to store a number of systems and sub-systems are used
Figure 1: PRBX S-CAP BOOST supercapacitors bank with
digital control and communication interface able to deliver regenerative energy this is also a very important to carry and handle parts and parcels during
peak energy to load and to store backward energy. contributor towards reducing energy consumption. the process. At every step, conveyors and fixed
or mobile robots will handle different types of
There are now the preconditions to move to the loads, from light to heavy, each requiring differ-
next step, Smart Power for a Smart Industry. ent amounts of energy.

The concept behind the smart factory is to op-
FROM SMART POWER IC TO timize, from a single, contributory process to
SMART INDUSTRY the overall one in order to reduce both time and
Often associated with the migration of Industry energy consumption. In the case presented in
3.0 to Industry 4.0, factory automation embraces figure 02, the process is to carry parcels from a

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