Efficiency comparison for microturbine power conditioning systems

The efficiency of two power conditioning systems (PCS) for a microturbine application is studied. One PCS composes of a passive rectifier, a boost converter and an inverter. The other composes of an active rectifier and an inverter. The Powerex device loss models are modeled in Saber. A 2-pole microturbine that generates high-frequency AC (400 Hz-900 Hz) is used as the input to the power conditioning systems. The results show that the topology with active rectifier has higher efficiency at heavy load. The methodology presented in this paper can be used for efficiency evaluation of other power conditioning systems.