An interview with James Hitchcock, a common supervisor of Keithley Devices a Tektronix Firm, shed gentle upon the latest acquisition of Elektro-Automatik (EA), a provider of high-power digital take a look at options.
EA’s principal utility area lies in vitality storage, mobility, hydrogen, and renewable vitality functions the place their bidirectional programmable DC energy provides can double up as each the facility provide and digital load with their distinctive regenerative function and bidirectionality. Many checks contain the need to dump giant quantities of energy within the type of warmth by way of passive/resistive load banks or digital masses, together with battery biking and burn-in checks. On an enormous scale, dealing with this quantity of warmth is a big enterprise, the place the correct HVAC and even liquid cooling could also be needed. As a substitute, EA energy provides take that vitality and switch it again to the grid, recycling in any other case wasted vitality and eliminating any cooling prices (Determine 1).
Determine 1: The method of vitality restoration for EA’s regenerative bidirectional programmable energy provides in a testing situation related with the unit beneath take a look at (UUT). Supply: EA, a Tektronix Firm
The principal utility area for a lot of Tektronix devices lie in sign integrity and precision excessive frequency testing with an providing of high-end blended sign oscilloscopes, sign turbines, and spectrum analyzers. Keithley supply measure models (SMUs), and precision measure devices provide options for semiconductor characterization and high quality management. Outdoors of this, the MSO oscilloscopes and IsoVu probes are geared in the direction of energy electronics efficiency evaluation. Nevertheless, how does any of this combine with EA’s excessive energy take a look at gear portfolio?
Take a look at options for the EV powertrain
“The first motivation for buying EA and mixing the options of Tektronix was targeted across the battery emulation capabilities of EA and the functions targeted on energy inverters and motor drives primarily within the automotive area” says James, “the place the EA sources can take a look at the batteries but additionally emulate them within the designs of the autos and the Tektronix 4 and 5 collection MSO scopes are well-suited for the AC sign evaluation to drive the motor that’s powered by these battery techniques”. As proven in Determine 2, choose EA energy provides can simulate a set of battery cells at a particular state of cost (SOC) in a couple of minutes. Sometimes, these checks contain hours of preparation, charging and discharging a number of batteries and completely different SOCs earlier than starting DUT validation.
Determine 2: The flexibility to each supply and sink energy allows EA’s energy provides to simulate battery conduct and precisely reproduce a battery’s voltage and present traits to check gadgets.
The Keithley knowledge acquisition (DAQ) techniques and digital multimeters (DMM) have performed a job on this area for a few years, monitoring the temperature and voltage management of the batteries in battery administration techniques (Determine 3). “So throughout your complete engineering workflow of designing the powertrain for an EV the Tektronix-, Keithley-, and EA-branded merchandise work collectively for an answer.”
Determine 3: Keithley DAQ techniques have lengthy been leveraged in environmental monitoring, burn-in/accelerated life testing, in addition to failure evaluation for automotive functions. Supply: Keithley, a Tektronix firm
Energy inverter and gasoline cell testing
“There are different alternatives in energy inverters in renewables, particularly changing voltage from the DC aspect with photo voltaic panels to AC,” says James. The testing area expands past this with gasoline cells testing for heavier obligation electrical mobility options akin to giant vans, building gear, trains, and boats. Gas cells are additionally more and more utilized in vitality safety, offering a backup supply of energy within the occasion a black out or brownout happens. “That is an space that EA is excellent at and Tektronix can become involved in designing the precision electronics wanted to manage this kind of testing.”
A spot in marketplace for a unified testing answer
“Our Keithley supply measurement models (SMUs) are well-suited to particular person cell design,” says James “Our sourcing capabilities with our SMUs cease at about 5 kW of energy (Determine 4). We’ve a 300 V answer and several other hundred amp pulsing options with our SMUs and we discovered engineers have been transferring to greater powers with the evolution of latest battery chemistries, new drive trains, and motors.”
Determine 4: The Keithley 2650 collection SMU is a excessive energy instrument designed for characterizing excessive energy electronics akin to diodes, FETs, IGBTs, and so forth., with as much as 3000 V or 2000 W of pulse present energy. Supply: Keithley, a Tektronix firm
Tektronix intends to help this pattern of transferring to greater voltage electrification system in EVs and extra vitality dense battery chemistries to succeed in parity with inner combustion engineer (ICE) autos, “there was a niche out there the place the suppliers have been providing the facility options or the measurement options however nobody was actually providing the total functionality to serve the engineer throughout that full energy portfolio”.
Within the close to time period, Tektronix intends to deliver the EA merchandise into their software program umbrella, offering unified testing options for engineers throughout the facility spectrum from low-power embedded IoT designs to ultra-high energy vitality storage, mobility, and hydrogen gasoline functions.
Aalyia Shaukat, affiliate editor at EDN, has labored within the design publishing trade for eight years. She holds a Bachelor’s diploma in electrical engineering from Rochester Institute of Know-how, and has printed works in EE journals and commerce magazines.
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