Model validation of multi-pulse rectifiers for charging capacitors

It is conceivable that the future fleet of US Navy vessels will deploy multiple high power AC and DC loads that must be reliably energized. Integration and operation of AC and DC loads will likely be achieved using an intelligently controlled microgrid architecture that is able to actively regulate and distribute power from both AC generation sources and DC energy storage devices. Some future loads may utilize intermediate energy storage that is highly capacitive, 10s of mF, and they may operate in a highly transient manner that is very stressful on the shipboard power system. Silicon controlled rectifier (SCR) based, multi-pulse rectifiers that are intelligently controlled, may be an attractive option for regulating AC power to charge capacitive DC loads in a repetitive manner. Though SCR multi-pulse rectifiers are well documented in the literature, there has been no published work found that studies their power quality when they are used to power repetitively operated capacitive loads. The work discussed here is aimed at developing experimentally validated Simulink® models of small scale, ~ 1 kW, 6, 12, 18, and 24 pulse rectifiers, respectively, when they are used charge repetitive capacitive loads. The simulation models will be discussed along with results collected to date.