How much do you know about power conversion control?

Think you’re an expert on designing digital control for power electronics systems?

 

Take the quiz—just 10 questions—to see how much you know!

QUESTION 1

For designing and tuning a digital controller for a power converter, which approach will provide the most options?

Use a SPICE circuit simulator to model the converter and controller
Manually code the control algorithm and tune it using a hardware setup

Model and simulate the controller and power converter in a system-level simulator

QUESTION 2

What is the best way to analyze the switching effects of a power electronics system and tune the cascaded controllers so that the system will operate stably across varying operating conditions?

Conduct frequency-domain analysis of the system and use a Bode plot or root locus to tune controllers

Conduct frequency-domain analysis and tune the cascaded controller independently

Develop an average value–based model of the power electronic system before tuning controllers

Conduct time-domain analysis and tune the controllers at a fixed operating point

QUESTION 3

What is the benefit of using hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) simulation to test controllers in a power electronics system?

Test the real-time execution of controller code before verifying in a hardware prototype

Find and correct errors before potential damage to the power electronics system

Reduce time cost and improve development efficiency

All of the above

QUESTION 4

After modeling and tuning your controller, what is NOT a best practice to verify the dynamic performance of a feedback-controlled power electronics converter?

Check the dynamic response of a time-varying load

Check the dynamic performance by testing on hardware

Check the dynamic response of a time-varying input voltage

Check the dynamic response of aging components

QUESTION 5

To verify a power converter’s ability to mitigate a fault, which is NOT a recommended practice?

Develop a model to simulate fault conditions before proceeding to hardware testing

Directly test the power converter under fault conditions or all possible operating ranges

Develop and simulate state and supervisory logic model for fault handling

Create a test harness for fault conditions and supervisory control during simulation

QUESTION 6

Which of the following is an efficient method to understand how a power converter affects the overall performance of a large electrical system (e.g., microgrid, conventional or renewable energy source, fuel cell, or battery storage system)?

Modeling and simulating the large electrical system before hardware testing

Directly testing on hardware

SPICE simulation

Hand coding and rapid prototyping

QUESTION 7

Which kind of simulation is suitable for validating code generated from control algorithms?

Software-in-the-loop (SIL)

Processor-in-the-loop (PIL)

Hardware-in-the-loop (HIL)

All of the above

QUESTION 8

True or False: The best way to implement changes to your controller code during rapid control prototyping (RCP) is to validate changes to the control algorithm in the desktop simulation model and re-generate code.

True

False

Graph of time-series data plotting 3 lines of data

QUESTION 9

What technique is responsible for generating pulse width modulated (PWM) signals to control the switches of an inverter, which then produces the required modulated voltage to drive the motor at the desired speed or torque?

Fixed-point design

Small-signal analysis

Space vector modulation

Time-domain analysis

QUESTION 10

Why should you generate C and HDL code from the control algorithms in your simulation model?

You can avoid hand-coding errors caused by misinterpretation of the algorithms or typographical errors

If you need to make changes to the code, you can verify the impact of changes to algorithms in simulation and re-generate code

You can test your algorithms using simulation for extreme operating and fault conditions and know that the code will behave the same as the algorithm

All of the above