Power supplies for plasma heating: PSM and involved challenges

Controlled fusion is the huge energy source and able to cater the future electricity needs. To achieve controlled fusion, wide variety of power supplies are being used at experimental level, mainly categorized as converters for supplying superconducting magnets and converters for plasma heating and current drive (H&CD) systems. Power converters for supplying super conducting coils are generating very high dc current (in kA range) while high dc voltage (∼ 30–1000 kV) is required for heating and current drive systems. Present article describes stringent performance requirements demanded by H&CD system and reason for adopting Pulse Step Modulation (PSM) based or modular inverter based High Voltage Power Supply (HVPS). Article also discuss case study of PSM based HVPS along with associated challenges appearing at operation modes. A glimpse of few important behavior of H&CD load and possible solution also discussed at the end.