Research of the Soft Start Circuit for the High

Voltage Power Supply Based on PSM Technology

L.L. Xia, M. Zhang, S.X. Ma and K.X. Yu
State Key laboratory of Advanced Electromagnetic Engineering and Technology, Wuhan, China
[email protected]

Abstract—The power supply based on pulse step charge, there is a inrush current, in each branch of hole
modulation (PSM) technology has been widely used as the high circuit. The inrush current may trigger the overcurrent
voltage power supply for additional heating systems, such as protection of the AC bus breaker. What’s more, the filtering
RF H&CD and NBI in tokamaks. The topology contains capacitors can be damaged if the charging current is too
numbers of converters and multi-secondary transformers. For large. As a protection of the breaker and capacitors, a soft
the magnetic inrush of the transformer and the charge current start procedure is necessary.
of the converters connecting with the secondary windings of
transformer, the power up of the power supply system is quite Traditionally, for limiting the inrush current when HVPS
complex. PSM power supply starts up by two steps: the soft powers up, there are resistors in series with each transformer
start of transformer and the pre-charge of the converters. and each filtering capacitor bank [1-3]. All the resistors
Resistor branches series with the transformer and each parallel with contactors. After the soft start procedure, the
converter are used to limit the inrush current. A lot of resister contactors switch on and the resistors cut off. Resistor branch
branches and parallel contactors in the converter modules are connecting with transformer primary winding and AC bus
required, as a result the dissipation and electromagnetic can limit the magnetic inrush of the transformer, while
interference (EMI) are serious. resistor branch connecting with transformer secondary
winding and rectifier can limit the charging current of
In this paper, the soft start circuit is simplified to only one
capacitor bank. The two branch will be cut off in turn, when
step for decreasing the dissipation and EMI. The pre-charge
the inrush current attenuate, transformer earlier and capacitor
circuits of the converters which are connected to the secondary
at first are diverted to the primary winding of transformer can later. As previously mentioned, the start of PSM HVPS
also limit the magnetic inrush current. Since the multi- includes two steps: the soft start of transformer and the pre-
secondary transformer powers up as the same time as charge of the capacitors. This soft start strategy can limit the
converters, the capacitors in all converters will limit the ramp inrush current observably, but a resistor branch and parallel
up rate of the transformer voltage, and the magnetic inrush contactor must be install in each SPS modules. As a result,
current can be ignored. To analyze the characters of the pre- the dissipation and electromagnetic interference (EMI) are
charge branches, all converters can be equaled as parallel serious.
during the soft start process. The equivalent circuit, a series
RLC circuit, is proposed in this paper. A 1.2kV power supply, This paper proposes a simplified soft start strategy with
contains 12 converters, with soft-start has been built up in only one step. The resistor branches in the SPS modules are
laboratory. Simulation and experiment results are shown to removed to decrease the dissipation and EMI. This paper
verify the theoretical analysis. A new soft start circuit of 100kV analyzes the circuit characters during soft start procedure,
high voltage power supply system was designed. come up with a method of selecting appropriate resistance. A
1.2kV power supply with soft-start circuit has been built up
Keywords—power supply; pulse step modulation; soft start; in laboratory. Simulation and experiment results are shown
multi-secondary transformer; capacitor to verify the theoretical analysis. And a new soft start circuit
of 100kV high voltage power supply system was designed.
I. INTRODUCTION
A 100kV High Voltage Power Supply (HVPS) based on
Pulse Step Modulation (PSM) technology will be set up in J-
TEXT laboratory as a main power supply of the Electron II. PROPOSED SOFT START CIRCUIT
Cyclotron Resonance Heating (ECRH) system. This HVPS The HVPS circuit containing soft start branch is shown in
contains 4 multi-secondary transformers and 144 switch Figure 1. The soft start circuit contains only one resistor
power supplies (SPS) modules, consist of lower voltage DC branch in series with AC bus and the AC source, also
rectifiers and chopper module. To decrease the ripple of paralleled with a contactor. When HVPS power up, this
output voltage, each rectifier connect with a large capacitor resistor can limit the inrush current and increase the rate of
bank. When the transformer power up and the capacitor current decay, both magnetic inrush of the transformer and
This work is supported by the National ITER Project of China (No. charging current of capacitor banks, as all of these
2010GB108001). components are in series with the resistor branch.

978-1-4799-0171-5/13/$31.00 ©2013 IEEE

 As we know, when a transformer switches into power
system without load, an inrush current will flowing into the
primary wingding. If there have been rectifier and capacitors R2
connected to the secondary wingdings, the inrush current Ua2 L2
caused by excitation can be ignored, because the voltage
Ub2
cross the transformer must rise up slowly, as the capacitors
are charging at the same time. The resistor branch limit the Uc2 C2
charging current of capacitors, in the initial stage of power
up. Then close the contactor after the inrush current dying
out.

Figure 3. Equivalent circuit converted into the secondary

To analyze the transient performance of inrush current,
the circuit illustrate by Figure 3 can be simplified as a second
order circuit model, showed in Figure 4. Ud is the rectified
voltage of modules, For three-phase bridge rectification,
ignoring the commutation process, there are currents flowing
in two phase of the three, at any time during soft start.

Figure 1. Configuration of 100kV HVPS

As all the capacitors are charging at the same time, the Figure 4. Second order circuit model for soft start
initial charging current flowing in each secondary wingdings
of one transformer are interactive, and that makes the The parameters can calculate as fallow,
analysis of the current flowing through the resistor difficult. Ud = 2.34Ua2 (1)
Noticed that the current in each secondary wingding is equal
for the parameters and topology of all the DC modules and i0 = N ic (2)
the wingdings are the same, all the modules with wingdings L0 = 2L2 (3)
can be regarded as parallel connection when charging. The
2
soft start procedure can be equivalent to a parallel simplify R0 = 2R2 =2R / k (4)
model charging a huge capacitor through the soft-start C0= C2 = N Cf (5)
resistor, a two-wingding transformer and a rectifier, as figure
2 shows. Figure 3 shows the equivalent circuit converted into Where
the secondary, where C2 is the parallel equivalent capacitor
L0, R0, C0 equivalent RLC of the second order
of all module, L2 is the leakage inductance of transformers
circuit.
converted into the secondary, and R2 is the resistor of soft
start branch, converted into the secondary. Ua2, Ub2, Uc2 are i0 total charging current of parallel modules
the secondary phase voltage of transformers.
ic charging current in each module
N number of modules
k transformation ratio
The zero state response of this second circuit is
equivalent to the soft start process. Equation (6) is the
differential equation of the RLC circuit, describing the inrush
current, where uc is the voltage cross the capacitors.

d 2uC
L0C 0 + R0C 0 + uC = Ud (6)
dt 2
Figure 2. Parallel simplify circuit model
 Because of the exciting current flow in the primary of τ = R0C0 (12)
transformer at steady state of the HVPS, there is a voltage
drop across the soft-start resistor, which makes the voltage of At first stage of soft start, if the soft-start resistance is
capacitor little lower than its steady state without the soft- larger, the charging current is smaller, but the decay time is
start resistor in current. When the original inrush current longer. What’s more, the voltage step is larger when cut off
decay, the contactor will be switch on, and there will be a the resistor, and the inrush current in second stage is larger,
voltage step on the capacitor. The voltage step will lead to as mentioned in the end of section II. The resistance must
another current pulse in the circuit. This is the second meet the condition defined by (11), and the true value should
transient process of the HVPS soft start. During this process, not too large. Simulation and experiment as follow are
the inrush current is limited by the leakage inductor of helpful to confirm the appropriate value.
transformer only.
IV. EXPERIMENT RESULTS
III. PREFERENCES OF THE SOFT-START RESISTOR
In order to verify the simplified circuit analysis method, a
Considering the two transient processes of soft start soft start circuit of a 1.2kV, 5A output power prototype,
procedure, the resistance of soft-start resistor should be in an consist of 12 SPS modules, was set up. The parameters of the
appropriate region, to balance the two current spikes and prototype are listed as follows:
decay times.
Transformer: 12kVA, 380V/84V;
At the first process, in order to avoid current oscillation,
it requires a large resistance so that the circuit described by Leakage inductance: 4%;
(6) is overdamped [4]. The circuit parameters should be Filtering capacitor: 330μF;
designed according to the following relation:
The soft-start resistance is larger than 2.18Ω by (8), and
R C − 4L0C0 > 0
2 2
0 0 (7) larger than 14.33Ω by (11). Here the resistance is 50W. The
current peak is 24.22A by (9), and 2.01A in each module.
The solution of (8) is The time constant is 19ms by (12).
Simulation results are shown in figure 5, and experiment
L0
R0 > 2 (8) results are shown in figure 6. The current peak is 2.1A
C0 during first stage. and 3.8A during second stage by
The instantaneous maximum value of the original inrush simulation in parallel circuit model, which is accord with the
current is defined by the resistor and voltage as capacitor is experiment results. And at the beginning of soft start, the
equivalent to short, while R0 is large enough and L0 can be transient response approximates the real circuit, while there
ignore here. The inrush current peak is express as follow is not the second stage.
equation: As the figures showing, the parallel simplify model can
predict the inrush current during all two stages, and the two
Ud
i max1 = (9) order circuit model is accurate during the first stage of soft
R0 start. The resistance of soft start branch can be calculated in
second order circuit model and rectified by simulation in
During soft start procedure, the charging current should parallel simplify circuit model.
be less than Id, the rated current of the DC bus, in each 4
module. Take notice of (9) and (2), the minimum resistance parallel circuit model
expresses define by (10). 3
second order circuit model
ic/A

U
2

R0 > d (10) 1

NId 0

As the leakage inductance is usually small, and filtering 0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9 1

capacitor is quite large, the circuit illustrated by figure 4 can t/s

be regarded as a RC first order circuit. Contrasting (8) and 120
(10), then combine with (4), the soft-start resistor should 100
satisfy (11). 80
Uc/V

k 2 Ud
60

R > (11) 40
parallel circuit model
2 NId 20
second order circuit model
0
0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9 1
The duration of soft start determined by the current decay t/s
time of RLC circuit. Ignoring the leakage inductance, the
time constant is: Figure 5. Simulation results
 VI. CONCLUSION
This paper researches the soft start procedure of HVPS
with multi-secondary transformer and SPS modules. A soft-
start resistor branch in series between transformers and AC
source is proposed. The paper come up with a parallel
simplify model and a second-order circuit model to simplify
and simulation the soft start procedure of the complicated
HVPS. The characteristics of capacitors charging current is
analyzed. The selection of soft-start resistance is given.
A 10kV output power prototype is set up, and the theory
proposed are verified by simulation and experiment results.
Then a soft start circuit for a 100kV output HVPS is
designed, and simulation results are given.
Figure 6. Experiment results

V. DESIGN OF SOFT START CIRCUIT FOR 100kV HVPS REFERENCES

[1] Alex, J. and W. Schminke, “A high voltage power supply for negative
A 100kV, 60A output HVPS is being built in J-TEXT ion NBI based on PSM technology”, 17th IEEE/NPSS Symposium, 6-
laboratory in Huazhong University of Science and 10, Oct, 1997, pp. 1063-1066.
Technology, consisting of 144 SPS and 4 multi-secondary [2] S.M. Pan, P. Fu, L. Yang, C.D. Hu, “The control system of the
transformers. The parameters of the HVPS are listed as 100kV HVPS for NBI”, 24th Symposium on Fusion Engineering, 26-
follows: 30, June, 2011, pp. 1-5.
[3] W. Forster, J. Alex. “High-voltage, High-power, Pulse-step
Transformer:1720kVA, 6300V/560V; Modulators for the Accurate Supply of Gyrotron and Other Heating
Devices,” Power Modulator Symposium, 2002 and 2002 High-voltage
Leakage inductance: 8%; Workshop. Conference Record of the Twenty-fifth International,
Filtering capacitor: 5.44mF; 2002, pp. 126-129.
[4] Q.R. Yan, D. Tan, Principles of Electric Circuits, Beijing: Publishing
The total transformer Capacity is 6880kVA. The House of Electronics Industry, 2009, pp. 155-162.
component parameters in equivalent circuit shown as
follow:Ud = 756V, L0 = 23.2μH, C0= 786.36mF.
Combine (4), (8) and (10), the minimum value of soft
start resistor R0 is 5.54Ω, and the corresponding time
constant is 0.0688s.
The designed soft start circuit is shown in figure 1, the
time from power up to cut off soft-start resistor is 1s, that
current inrush in first stage will have been die out. Tab 1
gives the current peak and voltage step in parallel simplify
model by simulation, where imax1 is the current peak in first
stage, and imax2 is the current peak in second stage, and all the
two current peak is the value in each module, equal to 1/144
of the charging current of C0 in simulation circuit. U1 is the
steady voltage in first stage, and UC is final voltage of
capacitor after soft start procedure.

TABLE I. THE TRANSIENT DATA OF SOFT START

R(Ω) imax1(A) U1(V) imax2(A) UC(V)

5 75 756 11 790
10 39 720 32 790
15 26 684 59 790
20 20 648 85 790

As the table shown, a resistor of 10Ω is appropriate to the

HVPS, and the soft-start time should be 1s.