I'm looking for some information for ose of IGBT's Designing D.C electronic load 1KW

[tremendoele]

Hello..!!

I'm looking for information that help me on the design of D.C Electronic Load for High Power = 1 KW of power. Then because is necessary draw high currents like 100A, 120A at high voltage = 48V maybe the best way is use IGBT's for this project. But I don't know if really this is the best way..!!

If...somebody have information or some schematic for simple design of high power electronic loads taht help me....please tell me.


Thanks ..!!

 

[nostrildamus]

If the load is simply burning power, is there some reason not to use MOSFETs or BJTs driven by op amps to produce a certain load current? Just bolt the MOSFET to a big heatsink. You can parallel devices to scale the power.

 

[FvM]

For 48V switching applications, MOSFET are bettered suited because of the lower voltage drop and higher switching speed. If you accept about 1 V saturation voltage, IGBT can be used as well.

 

[tremendoele]

The important factor to use IGBT's is that .... is very important on this design use the minimum size in order to save space. The burnin room is one important factor, if we use many MOSFETS to get 1KW load instead two or three igbts and it load is very big then we are going to need a "big room".......

 

[RCinFLA]

The pertinent factor is 1000 watts. If you want small size then its water cooling going to a radiator (if you don't count the size of the radiator) or a continously running water hose wasted water flush.

I made a 15 kW dummy load with multiple switched water heater elements in a five gallon bucket with water flush running from garden house. Water is always fun when dealing with electronics.

You can get a ideal on size perspective of forced air cooled by CPU coolers. With fan running full speed, on the back of average sized CPU finned heat sink you can handle about 100-200 watts dissipation depending on how hot you want to let the device get.

If you want continuously adjustable load then using a feedback control op amp driving MOSFET's is fine. Saturation charactistics doesn't matter since devices are operating in linear mode.

Only case where saturation characteristic would matter is if you were kicking in various power resistors which will give you discrete steps. It does have one advantage in that ceramic power resistors can be allowed to get blistering hot so you get more heat transfers for minimum amount of forced air cooling.

 

[Mr.Cool]

you can get single switch mosfets rated for over 1000A at 75V. **broken link removed**

Mr.Cool