A switched reluctance motor drive operating at unity power factor

The present paper describes a low power (750 W) switched reluctance motor drive for home appliances featuring close to unity power factor and low cost. The key features of the proposed drive are a simple speed control, minimum switch number inverter topology, and a compact high quality rectifier (HQR) input stage based on a quasi-resonant boost topology. The obtained structure is suitable for integration and allows to develop an inexpensive chip implementing all the main functions required by the proposed drive. The paper starts by pointing out recently introduced constraints on line current pollution of home appliances. The proposed drive is then presented emphasizing the design of the high quality rectifier input stage. Experimental results on a prototype are finally presented to evaluate the efficiency of the proposed drive.