Innovation & technology

Electric motors are being used almost everywhere in many of the applications like consumer, industrial, automotive applications etc. They can be found in your washing machines, air-conditioners, refrigerator, compressors, food processor, microwave oven, dryers, vacuum cleaners, fans, water pumps, solar water pumps, wind turbines, 2W/3W, cars and so many other products or applications where they need to run as efficiently as possible to reduce the power consumptions/electricity bills and significant contribution to reduce CO2 emission which is one of the major challenge globally. Each application or product has a specific requirement of type of electric motor and its control drives or techniques primarily based on the usability, performance, cost, efficiency, precision, reliability and safety etc.

 

Given the tight target of reducing the CO2 emission, more and more requirement of electrical machines with higher efficiency is need of the hour. The mechanical power is required to be generated from electrical power with maximum efficiency, lower cost and lower noise emissions. This has given raise to modern electrical motors and advanced drives to run these motors.

BLDC, PMSM and induction motors are widely used with modern Vector control to have good efficiency and torque to speed characteristics. Field oriented control (FOC) is a control method (A typical block diagram is show in figure) in which the stator currents of a three-phase AC or brushless DC electric motor are identified as two orthogonal components that can be visualized with a vector. One component defines the magnetic flux of the motor, the other the torque.

 

The stator currents can be transformed through clarke and park transformations to get the magnetic flux and torque components. Suitable control system can be applied to get the required performance from motor. Each of them be separately controlled as DC quantities and reverse transformed to stator quantities.

 

Incidence Energy offers a wide range of the motor control drive solutions for various type of motor (1 & 3 Phase AC Induction, PMSM, BLDC, PMDC etc) applications like Solar water pumps, Compressors, BLDC fans, 2W/3W automotive motor drive and other application specific solutions etc.

Maximum power point tracking (MPPT) is a technique used with energy sources with variable power to maximize energy extraction under all operating conditions. The technique is most commonly used with photovoltaic (PV) solar systems, but can also be used with other systems like wind turbines, optical power transmission and thermo photo voltaic etc.

 

MPPT is an algorithm implemented in PV systems (Power converter or inverters or charge controllers) to continuously adjust the impedance seen by the solar PV module or array to keep the PV system operating at, or close to, the peak power point of the PV panel under various dynamic operating conditions, like changing solar irradiance, temperature, and load. Several MPPT techniques or algorithms have been tried and implemented by researchers to maximize the power generated by PV systems in various configurations or applications. These techniques vary in many aspects as: simplicity, analogue or digital control based implementation, response time, convergence speed, sensors required, cost, range of effectiveness, and in other aspects related to end product or application.

 

The MPPT algorithms control the voltage to ensure that the system operates at “maximum power point” (or peak voltage) on the power voltage curve, as shown in figure.

The MPPT of the PV system can improve solar array output typical by 20~30%, and it is very important to operate at this point at all times to increase the efficiency and overall output of the PV system. Microcontrollers/Digital Signal Processor/Digital Signal Controllers are generally used to implement the MPPT algorithms in PV systems. Commonly used or discussed MPPT algorithms are like Perturb and observe, Incremental conductance, Current Sweep, Short current pulse, Open circuit voltage, Constant voltage, Temperature method, Fuzzy Logic and Artificial neural network methods etc.

Having a team with vast experience in simulations and actual implementation of the various MPPT techniques/algorithms by digital control using microcontrollers / digital signal processors, Incidence Energy offers various solutions for MPPT power converters and commercial products for various applications like PV Solar off-grid energy storage systems/power conditioning units/Inverters/UPS, Solar charge controllers, Solar EV in figure, On-grid PV systems, Hybrid PV systems and Street-lighting systems etc.

Internet of Thing (IOT) is an ecosystem of various embedded devices or systems that exchange data over wired to wireless network. These embedded devices include hardware devices, sensors, software and other technologies to communicate with other devices in network and transfer data to server located in cloud or locally. Data generated by IOT enabled systems used to take actions for any alert generation, predictive analysis and maintenance etc. Scope of IOT systems varies from monitoring & control of one small machine to monitoring, analytics, managing & control of huge solar power plant to manufacturing units to smart cities etc.

A mobile app is a medium between an IOT device enabled systems and a mobile phone. The mobile app works as the primary interface through which you can manage smart things locally or remotely as mobile phones have all connectivity option like Wi-Fi and Bluetooth etc. Mobile app supplement and enhance the use of the IOT systems to make it work more efficiently and smartly. Typical example of IOT architecture layers and components as shown in figure.