Hybrid power generation system for aircraft electrical emergency network

Abstract

A whole structure and two management strategies are proposed here for hybridisation of a Ram air turbine (RAT) by means of supercapacitors. Such hybrid structure is dedicated to an aircraft emergency network. The structure consists in coupling, through a 270 V DC bus, a controlled source (RAT) with a storage device interfaced through a bidirectional DC–DC converter. Both the energy-management strategies are described and analysed: the first one is to assign the ‘high-frequency harmonics’ of the load power to the storage which is current controlled, whereas the RAT controls the bus voltage and then only feeds the average power, losses and low-frequency harmonics of the load. The second one proposes an energy optimised operation of the system: the RAT, being current controlled, is able to maximise the supplied power (maximum power point tracking), as for classical wind turbines. For such a strategy, the bus voltage is regulated from the storage device. The RAT sizing and its mass can then be strongly reduced by means of this hybrid structure controlled with optimised management strategies. Experiments on a lab test-bench confirm analyses presented.