With the requirements for reducing emissions and improving fuel economy, automotive companies are developing electric, hybrid electric, and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles. Power electronics is an enabling technology for the development of these environmentally friendlier vehicles and implementing the advanced electrical architectures to meet the demands for increased electric loads. In this paper, a brief review of the current trends and future vehicle strategies and the function of power electronic subsystems are described. The requirements of power electronic components and electric motor drives for the successful development of these vehicles are also presented.

Power Electronics and Motor Drives in Electric, Hybrid Electric, and Plug-In Hybrid Electric Vehicles

Controlled induction motor drives without mechanical speed sensors at the motor shaft have the attractions of low cost and high reliability. To replace the sensor the information on the rotor speed is extracted from measured stator voltages and currents at the motor terminals. Vector-controlled drives require estimating the magnitude and spatial orientation of the fundamental magnetic flux waves in the stator or in the rotor. Open-loop estimators or closed-loop observers are used for this purpose. They differ with respect to accuracy, robustness, and sensitivity against model parameter variations. Dynamic performance and steady-state speed accuracy in the low-speed range can be achieved by exploiting parasitic effects of the machine. The overview in this paper uses signal flow graphs of complex space vector quantities to provide an insightful description of the systems used in sensorless control of induction motors.

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Sensorless control of induction motor drives

Solar water splitting is a promising approach to transform sunlight into renewable, sustainable and green hydrogen energy. There are three representative ways of transforming solar radiation into molecular hydrogen, which are the photocatalytic (PC), photoelectrochemical (PEC), and photovoltaic–electrolysis (PV–EC) routes. Having the future perspective of green hydrogen economy in mind, this review article discusses devices and systems for solar-to-hydrogen production including comparison of the above solar water splitting systems. The focus is placed on a critical assessment of the key components needed to scale up PEC water splitting systems such as materials efficiency, cost, elemental abundancy, stability, fuel separation, device operability, cell architecture, and techno-economic aspects of the systems. The review follows a stepwise approach and provides (i) a summary of the basic principles and photocatalytic materials employed for PEC water splitting, (ii) an extensive discussion of technologies, procedures, and system designs, and (iii) an introduction to international demonstration projects, and the development of benchmarked devices and large-scale prototype systems. The task of scaling up of laboratory overall water splitting devices to practical systems may be called “an artificial photosynthetic leaf-to-farm challenge”.

Toward practical solar hydrogen production - an artificial photosynthetic leaf-to-farm challenge.

The operation of a brushless permanent-magnet machine requires rotor-position information, which is used to control the frequency and phase angle of the machine's winding currents. Sensorless techniques for estimating rotor position from measurements of voltage and current have been the subject of intensive research. This paper reviews the state of the art in these sensorless techniques, which are broadly classified into three types: motional electromotive force, inductance, and flux linkage.

Review of position-sensorless operation of brushless permanent-magnet machines

Active power decoupling methods are developed to deal with the inherent ripple power at twice the grid frequency in single-phase systems generally by adding active switches and energy storage units. They have obtained a wide range of applications, such as photovoltaic (PV) systems, light-emitting diodes (LEDs) drivers, fuel cell (FC) power systems, and electric vehicle (EV) battery chargers, etc. This paper provides a comprehensive review of active power decoupling circuit topologies. They are categorized into two groups in terms of the structure characteristics: independent and dependent decoupling circuit topologies. The former operates independently with the original converter, and the latter, however, shares the power semiconductor devices with the original converter partially and even completely. The development laws for the active power decoupling topologies are revealed from the view of “duality principle,” “switches sharing,” and “differential connection.” In addition, the exceptions and special cases are also briefly introduced. This paper is targeted to help researchers, engineers, and designers to construct some new decoupling circuit topologies and properly select existing ones according to the specific application.

Review of Active Power Decoupling Topologies in Single-Phase Systems

This paper presents a new sensorless control scheme of a surface-mounted permanent-magnet (SMPM) motor using high-frequency voltage signal injection method based on the high-frequency impedance difference. In the SMPM motor, due to the flux of the permanent magnet, the stator core around the q-axis winding is saturated. This makes the magnetic saliency in the motor. This magnetic saliency has the information about the rotor position. The high-frequency voltage signal is injected into the motor in order to detect the magnetic saliency and estimate the rotor position. In this paper, the relationship between the high-frequency voltages and high-frequency currents is developed using the voltage equations at the high frequency, and the high-frequency impedance characteristics are analyzed experimentally under various conditions. The proposed sensorless control scheme makes it possible to drive the SMPM motor in the low-speed region including zero speed, even under heavy load conditions. The experimental results verify the performance of the proposed sensorless algorithm.

Sensorless drive of surface-mounted permanent-magnet motor by high-frequency signal injection based on magnetic saliency

This paper describes a new scheme to find the rotor flux angle from stator voltages and currents by injecting a high-frequency signal. The signal is not a rotating one but a fluctuating one at a reference frame rotating synchronously to the fundamental stator frequency. When the estimated rotor flux angle coincides with the actual angle, the proposed method makes virtually no ripple torque, no vibration and less audible noise caused by the injected signal. The difference of impedances between the flux axis and the quadrature axis at high-frequency signal injection on the rotor flux angle is explained by the equivalent circuit equation of the induction machine. The difference is verified by experiments on test motors under various testing conditions. A sensorless field orientation algorithm is proposed and experimental results clarify the satisfactory operation of the algorithm with one hundred and fifty percent load torque at zero stator frequency.

Sensorless field orientation control of an induction machine by high frequency signal injection

This paper presents the analysis of a surface-mounted permanent-magnet (SMPM) machine for the sensorless control scheme based on the high-frequency fluctuating voltage signal injection method. A simplified high-frequency model of an SMPM machine in the estimated rotor reference frame is developed and a sensorless rotor position and speed estimation algorithm is described. To support this, the high-frequency impedances of an SMPM machine are analyzed by finite-element analysis (FEA) and compared with measurement results using a pulsewidth-modulation (PWM) inverter system under various injection conditions. The results of the FEA and measurements are coincident with each other with some errors due to the nonlinear behavior of the PWM inverter and the SMPM machine. The analysis results give physical insights into selecting the injection conditions for sensorless operation of the SMPM machine even though adjustments considering nonlinear behaviors of PWM inverters are required in the actual operation for the desired performance. The experimental results of speed and position control using a commercial SMPM machine are presented based on the analysis of the SMPM machine for the sensorless control algorithm.

Analysis of permanent magnet machine for sensorless control based on high frequency signal injection

This paper describes a torque, speed, or position control method at standstill and low speed in the interior permanent-magnet motor (IPMM) drive system without any rotational transducer. While IPMMs have originally magnetic saliency, it varies according to the load conditions and the control performance can be easily degraded. In this paper, the saliency or impedance difference is used as the conventional methods and, nevertheless, in order to amplify the difference containing the information of the rotor angle and to maintain a reasonable performance under any load condition a high-frequency injection scheme is proposed. A speed and position estimation scheme based on the characteristics of the high-frequency impedance is proposed. The scheme extracts the high-frequency impedance components related to the rotor position. An initial angle estimation scheme for starting from an arbitrary rotor position is also proposed. It can distinguish the north magnetic pole position from the south one in several decade milliseconds. The proposed scheme enables position control of a transducerless or position-sensorless IPMM. The experimental results clarify the satisfactory operation of the proposed position control algorithm under any load condition.

Sensorless rotor position estimation of an interior permanent-magnet motor from initial states

The rotor position of an interior permanent-magnet synchronous machine (IPMSM) can be estimated without a position sensor by signal injection sensorless control at standstill and/or in very low speed rotating condition. In the signal injection sensorless control, however, the fundamental control performance is limited by the frequency of the injected signal, and no negligible acoustic noise is generated. If the frequency of the injected voltage signal would increase to pulsewidth modulation (PWM) switching frequency and if the switching frequency is near or above audible range, the dynamics of the sensorless control can be improved, and the acoustic noise can be remarkably reduced or totally eliminated. This paper describes how to extract the rotor position information of IPMSM using the voltage signal injection whose frequency is the same as the PWM switching frequency. Compared to the conventional heterodyning process, the proposed method is simple to implement and appropriate for PWM switching frequency signal injection. The high-frequency voltage signal can be injected in the stationary reference frame or in the estimated rotor reference frame. In this paper, the 5- and 16-kHz signal injections are proposed, implemented, and compared. The experimental results confirm the effectiveness of the proposed method.

Jung-Ik Ha

Papers

Sensorless drive of surface-mounted permanent-magnet motor by high-frequency signal injection based on magnetic saliency

Sensorless field orientation control of an induction machine by high frequency signal injection

Analysis of permanent magnet machine for sensorless control based on high frequency signal injection

Sensorless rotor position estimation of an interior permanent-magnet motor from initial states

PWM Switching Frequency Signal Injection Sensorless Method in IPMSM