Modern education methods in extracting power factor preregulator's parameters

Abstract

The modern design of switch-mode power supplies is mainly targeted on designing the power factor correction (PFC) circuitry, since most of the engineering effort is oriented towards power quality issues. As a result, teaching power supply design is more and more related to power factor correction instead of harmonic suppression and EMC filters. Thus, the main issue in designing power factor circuits resides in proper selection of components and control techniques for various topologies of switch mode power supplies. The paper proposes a new method of interactive training in power factor circuits by implementing a power factor control model for simulating various scenarios on a boost converter for both continuous and discontinuous modes of conduction. The simulation model is designed in MATLAB/SIMULINK in order to increase the possibility of further development and to allow integration in other educational platforms. The proposed power factor model also allows a better and more accurate simulation for switch mode power supplies along with the related educational benefits of using a widely known simulation environment (MATLAB/SIMULINK).