Design of a regenerative load to increase efficiency during reliability testing of DC supply equipment

Abstract

The paper is concerned with the design & construction of a regenerative load that redirects the electrical energy used for testing back to the grid instead of wasting it as heat. Manufacturers of DC supply equipment, such as DC power supplies and battery management units, apply burn-in testing at full load for 24 hours to detect early failures and reliability issues. The power drawn during full-load testing of DC supply equipment is normally dissipated into heat through resistive loads. The regenerative load has a very wide input voltage range to be able to test various models of DC supply equipment. The regenerative load consists of an efficient wide input voltage range DC-DC converter and a grid-connected inverter. This system will allow the energy drawn from the equipment under test to be fed back to the grid. The only energy consumed corresponds to the losses within the system.