Design and Implementation of the 40kV, 13kW High Efficiency High Voltage Capacitor Charger

This paper deals with design and implementation of the 40kV, 13kW high-efficiency high-voltage capacitor charger for the pulsed power modulator. The proposed capacitor charger consists of the 24 series-connected power cells, a resonant inverter, and a distinctive high-voltage transformer. Moreover, third winding of high-voltage transformer is added to compensate voltage unbalance of each power cell automatically, and the relay mode operation is suggested to generate minimum 1kV even at light load condition while restricting the maximum switching frequency. In this paper, the operation principles of series-loaded resonant converter are explained and analyzed. In addition, the mode analysis of the resonant converter operating at above resonance frequency are conducted. Based on these analysis, the design of the 40kV, 13kW capacitor charger is suggested. To verify the proposed design, PSpice simulation modeling was performed, and the reliability and robustness of the proposed high voltage capacitor charger is proved through experimental results. In future, the pulsed power modulator based on the proposed high voltage capacitor charger will be developed by connecting IGBT switches between the power cells.