Power converter for DC bus sharing to increase the energy efficiency in drive systems

Abstract

It is state of the art for many drive systems like those used in industrial robotics, conveyor systems or diverse numerical control machinery to have a common DC bus power system architecture. Due to regenerative braking, the DC bus voltage increases until a certain limit, which is limited means of a balancing resistor (brake chopper). Systems that require rapid cyclic starts and stops are subject to significant energy waste due to extensive use of the brake chopper.In this article, a novel power converter for drive systems is proposed that allows the brake chopper to be omitted and enables the exchange of regenerative energy among multiple drive systems within an independent DC subgrid with one centralized energy storage element. The solution does not require identical hardware or exact synchronization between the drive rectifiers, therefore it is applicable to both existing and new production equipment alike. Experimental results in industrial robot drives show savings of up to 20%.

Reducing the energy consumption of industrial robots in manufacturing systems

“…Another research that uses energy-efficient motion planning method can be found in [22,23]. In their research, they discovered a solution for reducing the energy consumption of IR by optimizing their motion planning without changing system configurations.…”

AREUS — Innovative hardware and software for sustainable industrial robotics

“…Concerning the first AREUS innovation and regarding automotive manufacturing as one of most automated industries with a high degree of IR applications, several aspects related to energy efficiency have been previously examined in collaboration with the major automotive manufacturer Daimler AG, resulting in a doctoral thesis [5] and in experimental field testing within a real assembly plant located in Sindelfingen, Germany [6]. In addition, the vision of future manufacturing represented in the German national initiative -Industrie 4.0 [7], which promotes an individualised, adaptive and fast production based on digital communication technologies, would present new functionalities also from an energy utilisation perspective.…”

A Review on Energy-Saving Optimization Methods for Robotic and Automatic Systems

“…The EnergyTeam is a promising solution, but it requires a robot controller able to receive external DC power. In [30][31][32], the case of a single centralized capacitor that is shared between different DC subgrids (i.e., a subgrid is composed by several drive systems), each one with its own rectifier, is considered. In these papers, a method to avoid the synchronization between every rectifier's subgrids is proposed.…”

“…The main idea behind these devices is to harvest the energy during the braking phase-which is usually wasted-store it, and provide it back to the system when necessary [20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32]. Two different types are considered and analyzed: (1) the type of energy-storing devices used, and (2) energy-sharing via the interaction between actuators exchanging energy in a multi-actuator system.…”

“…3. Hardware addition: The addition of components for storing and recovering energy [20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36].…”