Int. Journal of Electrical & Electronics Engg.
Vol. 2, Spl. Issue 1 (2015)
e-ISSN: 1694-2310 | p-ISSN: 1694-2426
Automated Air Cooled Three Level Inverter system using Arduino Alok Deep1, Jyoti Singh2, Shimi S.L3 1,2,3
Department of Electrical Engineering, NITTTR, Chandigarh, India
Abstract—The output voltage of a three level inverter is stepped voltage in which the output voltage have three possible values. Such systems can be used to interface renewable energy sources with the grid. Temperature has significant effect on performance of power MOSFETs. Typically, the MOSFETs used as power switches in such applications are a significant source of heat, and the heat energy dissipated by these components must be carefully controlled if operating temperatures are to be maintained. So for the system to work efficiently cooling of MOSFETs is required. This paper proposed an automated air cooled 3 level H-bridge inverter. The system consists of MOSFETs, LM 35 temperature sensor, Optocouplers for isolation. Arduino is used to control the on-off operation of fan. When temperature rises above certain level fan turns on to cool the MOSFETs. Keywords — Arduino, MATLAB, MOSFETs, Optocouplers, LM 35, Cooling Fan.
INTRODUCTION Power Electronics is interdisciplinary and is at the confluence of three fundamental technical areas - power, electronics and control, and is used in a wide variety of industries from computers, chemical plants to rolling mills. The importance of power electronics has grown over the years due to several factors. MATLAB have been used for simulating the power electronic circuits like rectifiers, inverters, choppers and ac voltage controllers. They have the detailed device models and have been able to represent the controller portion of the converter system by its functional features in as a simplified manner as possible. In this paper the simulation and hardware implementation of a three level inverter circuit and cooling of the system has been taken into consideration. A 3 Level Inverter is a high-efficiency power electronic inverter particular, for use with three-phase drives, as a grid-tie inverter for photovoltaic installations or wind turbines and in power supplies [1]. Some industrial applications of inverters are for adjustable- speed ac drives, induction heating, stand by air-craft power supplies, UPS (uninterruptible power supplies) for computers, HVDC transmission lines etc. This converter topology used MOSFET power semiconducting devices it is act as a switches. While designing inverter with power electronic devices cooling of power electronic components is always required because of their high power ratings. In MOSFET when the temperature increases above 25oC the normalized onresistance increases and load current decreases, and hence efficiency of system goes down [2].
To increase the efficiency we design a system to maintain its temperature at 25oC by fan cooling which is controlled by Arduino Microcontroller Board [3]. In section 2 a simplified block diagram of the proposed system and overview of Arduino Uno are discussed. The section 3 describes the proposed work and circuit diagram of system. In Section 4 the flow of process is shown. In section 5, 6 and 7 the MATLAB simulation model, hardware implementation and output waveforms of system are discussed respectively. The Section 8 discusses all the conclusion and future development of project. BLOCK DIAGRAM DESCRIPTION The goal of this project is to improve the efficiency of 3 level inverter by maintaning the operating temperature of MOSFETs at 25oC. The system consists of a power supply, a cooling fan, MOSFET bridge, Optocouplers for isolation of power circuit from control circuit and Arduino [4-5]. The simplified block diagram of the system is shown in Fig. 1.
Fig. 1 Block diagram of System Over view of Arduino Arduino is an open-source electronics prototyping platform, mostly based on small, easy-to-use hardware and software [6-7]. It can affect devices, like lights, motors and other actuators by receiving input from sensor. All the action performed by Arduino is programmed to the microcontroller on the board via Arduino programming language and the Arduino development environment. Arduino projects can be stand-alone or communicate with other software applications running on a computer and other types of hardware.
Fig. 2 Arduino Uno Microcontroller Development Board NITTTR, Chandigarh
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