The paper presents investigation results of the natural balancing phenomena in the flying-capacitor SEPIC converters. The SEPIC converters topologies can be reconfigured to the flying-capacitor topology. Owing to this modification the advantageous increase of frequency of the current in the chokes and the decrease of semiconductors voltages can be achieved which is shown in this paper. Similarly to other multilevel flying capacitor topologies the adequate voltage sharing of the flying capacitors is an important issue for safe operation of the converter. The paper focuses on the analysis of the flying capacitor voltages balancing in the converter by natural currents as well as by the application of the additional RLC balancing booster. The paper proves that the natural balancing can be achieved by the specific application of the balancing circuit in the flying-capacitor SEPIC topology and proves the specific differences in the balancing process by natural currents of converter and with the usage of the balancing circuit. An operation of the converter with the balancing circuit and the natural balancing ability is studied here.

The paper presents a proposal of using additional statistical parameters such as: standard deviation, variance, maximum and minimum increases of the observed value that were determined during measurements of temperature fields created on the surface of the tested electrochemical capacitor. The measurements were carried out using thermographic methods in order to support assessment of the condition of electrochemical capacitor under classic durability tests based on methods of determination of capacity and equivalent series resistance. The possibility of using some statistical parameters in assessment of the electrochemical capacitor quality was illustrated. The applied measurement methodology and the results of research associated with the classic methods of supercapacitors’ assessment are presented. The obtained results indicate that the variability of some statistical parameters of temperature fields can be directly related to changing the values of standard parameters describing electrochemical capacitor, which are capacitance and equivalent series resistance.

A low drop-out [LDO] voltage regulator with fast transient response which does not require a capacitor for proper operation is proposed in this paper. Recent cap-less LDOs do not use off chip capacitor but instead they use on chip capacitor which occupy a large area on the chip. In the proposed LDO, this on chip capacitor is also avoided. A novel secondary local feedback technique is introduced which helps to achieve a good transient response even in the absence of output capacitor. Further an error amplifier that does need compensation capacitor is selected to reduce the on chip area. Stability analysis shows that the proposed LDO is stable with a phase margin of 78°. The proposed LDO is laid out using Cadence Virtuoso in 180 nm standard CMOS technology. Post layout simulation is carried out and LDO gives 6mV=V and 360µV=mA line and load regulation respectively. An undershoot of 120 mV is observed during the load transition from 0 mA to 50 mA in 1 µs transition time, however LDO is able to recover within 1:4 µs. Since capacitor is not required in any part of design, it occupies only 0:010824 mm2 area on the chip.

Field programmable analog arrays (FPAA), thanks to their flexibility and reconfigurability, give the designers quite new possibilities in analog circuit design. The number of both academic projects on FPAA and applications of commercially available programmable devices is still growing. This paper explores the properties and parameters of two most popular FPAA circuits: the AnadigmVortex AN221E04 and AnadigmApex AN231E04 from the Anadigm company. The research conducted by the authors led to the discovery of some undocumented features of these devices. Several applications for audio processing were built and tested. The results show that these circuits can be used in medium-demanding audio applications. Thanks to dynamic reconfigurability, they also allow to build an universal analog audio signal processor. These circuits can also act as a versatile platform for rapid prototyping and educational purposes.

Electronic Double-Layer Capacitors (EDLC), called Supercapacitors (SC), are electronic devices that are capable to store a relatively high amount of energy in a small volume comparing to other types of capacitors. They are composed of an activated carbon layer and electrolyte solution. The charge is stored on electrodes, forming the Helmholtz layer, and in electrolyte. The capacitance of supercapacitor is voltage- dependent. We propose an experimental method, based on monitoring of charging and discharging a supercapacitor, which enables to evaluate the charge in an SC structure as well as the Capacitance-Voltage (C-V) dependence. The measurement setup, method and experimental results of charging/discharging commercially available supercapacitors in various voltage and current conditions are presented. The total charge stored in an SC structure is proportional to the square of voltage at SC electrodes while the charge on electrodes increases linearly with the voltage on SC electrodes. The Helmholtz capacitance increases linearly with the voltage bias while a sublinear increase of total capacitance was found. The voltage on SC increases after the discharge of electrodes due to diffusion of charges from the electrolyte to the electrodes. We have found that the recovery voltage value is linearly proportional to the initial bias voltage value.

The article proposes the method of synthesis of active elements with time-varying parameters R(t), C(t) and L(t). In order to construct the elements, it is necessary to use operational amplifiers, multipliers and classic RLC components. The variability in time of the elements results from applying voltage to control terminals. Assuming that the parameters of elements R(t), L(t), C(t) are exponentially varying, dependencies describing the control voltage waveforms which enable such a parameter variability were determined. The obtained results were illustrated with examples and PSpice simulations.

Energy storage technology (EST) is an effectiveway to improve the power quality of renewable energy generation (such as solar energy and wind energy), but a single energy storage system (ESS) is difficult to meet the demand for the safe operation of the grid. According to the structure and operation characteristics of the existing battery/super-capacitor hybrid energy storage system (HESS), a battery/super-capacitor HESS is proposed. The working principle and three working modes (the super-capacitor pre-charging cold stand-by mode, the boost mode and buck mode) of the HESS are analyzed in detail. The state equations of the boost mode and buck mode are derived. The state space average method is used to establish the small signal equivalent model under the buck/boost mode. More-over, the charge and discharge control strategy of the HESS is obtained by combining the voltage closed-loop control. The simulation model is built in Matlab/Simulink to verify the effectiveness of the proposed HESS and its control strategy. The results show that the HESS and its control strategy can ensure the DC bus voltage has good stability and superior anti-interference, and it can simultaneously provide large current, increase the battery life, and improve the technical economy of energy storage.

This study suggests a new algorithm based on a combination of fuzzy logic and genetic algorithm (GA) to improve voltage profile in a microgrid. The considered microgrid includes control variables such as onload tap changer (OLTC), active power output from distributed generators (DG) and reactive power output from feeder switched capacitors that are controlled in a microgrid controller (MGC) by communication links. The proposed method was used to obtain the optimum value of control variables to establish voltage stabilization in varying load condition as online. For establishing voltage stabilization at the microgrid, an objective function is defined and is tried to minimize it by control variables. The control variables were changed based on fuzzy logic and the GA was employed for finding the optimum shape of membership functions. In order to verify the proposed method, a 34 buses microgrid in varying load condition was analyzed and was compared with previous works.

The radial distribution system is a rugged system, it is also the most commonly used system, which suffers by loss and low voltage at the end bus. This loss can be reduced by the use of a capacitor in the system, which injects reactive current and also improves the voltage magnitude in the buses. The real power loss in the distribution line is the I2R loss which depends on the current and resistance. The connection of the capacitor in the bus reduces the reactive current and losses. The loss reduction is equal to the increase in generation, necessary for the electric power provided by firms. For consumers, the quality of power supply depends on the voltage magnitude level, which is also considered and hence the objective of the problem becomes the multi objective of loss minimization and the minimization of voltage deviation. In this paper, the optimal location and size of the capacitor is found using a new computational intelligent algorithm called Flower Pollination Algorithm (FPA). To calculate the power flow and losses in the system, novel data structure load flow is introduced. In this, each bus is considered as a node with bus associated data. Links between the nodes are distribution lines and their own resistance and reactance. To validate the developed FPA solutions standard test cases, IEEE 33 and IEEE 69 radial distribution systems are considered.

This paper presents a concept and the results of an investigation of a DC–DC boost converter with high voltage gain and a reduced number of switches. The novel concept assumes that the converter operates in a topology composed of series connection switched- capacitor-based multiplier (SCVM) sections. Furthermore, the structure of the sections has significant impact on parameters of the converter which is discussed in this paper. The paper demonstrates the basic benefit such a multisection SCVM idea in the converter, which is the significant reduction in the number of switches and diodes for high voltage gain in comparison to an SCVM converter. Aside from the number of switches and diodes, such parameters as efficiency and volume of passive components in the multisection converter are analyzed in this paper. In figures, the analysis is demonstrated using the example of 100 kW thyristor-based converters. All the characteristics of the converter are compared between various configurations of switching cells in the particular sections, thus the paper can be useful for a design approach for a high voltage gain multicell converter.