Design and testing of a 5 MW battery-based inductive power supply

Abstract

A 5 MW battery-based inductive power supply (IPS) was designed and tested. The battery is assembled from 636 low-resistance lead-acid sealed batteries organized in strings that are connected to busbars via small-size contactors. A vacuum breaker serves as a closing switch, while an explosively driven opening switch interrupts the circuit, transferring the coil current to the load. In case of load malfunction, the energy stored in the coil is dumped into a dummy load. The control and measurement means are decoupled from the high current carrying conductors. Optimization of the battery-coil matching is discussed. The current sharing between the strings is analyzed. IPS parasitic inductance for different arrangements is calculated. By careful design, it was reduced to 4 /spl mu/H. PSpice simulations of the IPS, accounting for the components' nonlinearity, are presented. Main components, such as batteries, contactors and protective equipment were tested under high current conditions. The IPS was evaluated both with a resistive and an electro-thermal load up to a coil energy of 0.5 MJ. The power amplification of 100 was realized. It was found that the experimental results agree closely with calculations, and the IPS performs according to the design specifications. Ways of IPS compaction using advanced battery technology are reviewed.