Design of power electronics for a satellite flywheel energy storage system

This paper presents the design of power electronics for a satellite flywheel energy storage system. Design issues includes system design considerations, the design of power stage of the flywheel inverter/rectifier, and the control strategies. A novel twelve-step control scheme was used to improve the phase current transition of BDCM in generator mode. A simple bidirectional current-mode controller for the control of three-phase currents in the BDCM is described. A prototype has been built and preliminary tests have verified the control strategies.