Commercial power electronics controllers

Abstract

New commercial power electronic controllers come to the market almost everyday to help improve electronic circuit and system performance and efficiency. In this chapter, we select and discuss some basic structures and functions in commercial electronic power controllers to address the fundamental requirement in DC (direct current)–DC, AC (alternate current)–DC and DC–AC converters and their applications. In DC–DC switching-mode converters, a simple and elegant hysteretic controller is described to regulate the basic buck, boost and buck–boost converters under slightly different configurations. In AC–DC converters, the input current shaping for power factor correction posts a constraint. But, several brilliant commercial controllers are demonstrated for boost and flyback converters to achieve almost perfect power factor correction. With the understanding of the gas-discharge-based fluorescent lamp behaviour, it is explained why the resonant converters along with their load-dependent characteristics and controllers found their triumph in driving fluorescent lamps in high frequency. Recently, various controllers and regulators are developed in the market to drive new efficient light source—light emitting diodes (LEDs). It is shown that while simple modification of existing commercial DC–DC controllers could lead to current source type for driving LEDs, better circuit structures and controllers are developed in the marketplace.