Cost-Effective Practical Developments of High-Performance

and Multi-Functional UPS with New System Configurations

and Their Specific Control Implementations
Katsuya Hkachi*, Makoto Sakane*,Tomoki Matsui*, Akira Kojima** and Mutsuo Nakaoka**
*Research and Development Division, The 2nd Takatsuki Plant, Yuasa Corporation
2-3-21 Kosobe-cho Takatsuki-City Osaka, 569, Japan
**Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering, Graduate School of Technology, Yamaguchi University
2557 Tokiwadai Ube-City Yamaguchi, 755, Japan

Ahtract - The statesf-the art Ups which is composed

of power conversion and inversion conditioning and

procesSiag conilguration incorporathg simple half-bridge
adfve AC/DC converter and hP1I-bddge PWM inverter
dradts with no eketrial isolation power stage has attracted
spedal intemt recently in computer and tderommunication
systems. This UPS topology is highly cost-effective and
suitable for Its power convemlon ef!ldmcy Improvement and
vdumehic slze and weight reduction. However, this
attractive UPS topology has significant disadvantage that
storage batteries have to be connected to the high DC link
bus. In order to provide an acceptable DC voltage link with
storage bntteries, an improved type of application-specific
UPS topdogies have been proposed and investigated from a
practical point of view.
This paper presents a aoa-eleetrical isolated prototype of
UPS d d t topologies incorporating converter circuits for
battery bank interface and their related sped6c multifunctional control strategies, which are composed of costeffective IGBT modules. The operating principles of power
conversion topologies and control strategies are described.
The experimental results of a unique and high-performance
Ups topology with battery bank interthce circuit are
illustmted for 3kVA UPS application and discussed as
compared with the latest conventional UPS with storage
batteries connected to the h@ DC voltage bus.

INTRODUCXION
Fig.1 shows the ordinal circuit cor@uration of the
conventional UPS(Uninterruptib1e Power Supply). In its
normal operation, a single-phase lOOV input AC voltage
is converted into a stable DC voltage by a converter and
DC power is supplied to a sinewave inverter, as well as
battery bank. The sinewave inverter converts the DC
output voltage supplied from the converter to a single
phase lOOV voltage in order to supply to the loads.
0-7803-2730-6/95 $4.000 1995 IEEE

When there is a power failure, the DC power from the

storage battery is converted into AC power by the
sinewave inverter in order to supply continuously to the
load. If the load is too large or if the inverter should fail
for a certain reason, THY2 is to be turned OFF and
THY1 ON for the continued supply of power to the load
through the commercial power bypass.
There is a isolation transformer TR1 at the output
side of the inverter. Without the tramformer, there exist
a short circuit through the commercial bypass line as
shown in FIG.2, and it brings a damage to the UPS.
Because the transformer operates at the commercial
frequency, its volume and weight are very large, and it
means it is very difficult to reduce the size and weight of
the UPS. Previously, we proposed a UPS topology of a
high frequency link which can reduce the size and weight
of the transformer[l]. But this topology brought increase
of number of parts and cost.
At present, the schematic UPS topology shown in
Fig.3 is of importance as a promising small scale UPS
circuit configuration. This UPS is composed of an active
converter with a simple half-bridge topology, DC
bus line link with storage batteries in parallel with
smoothing capacitor, and a sinewave PWM inverter with
a simple half-bridge topology. This unique power
conversion proces.ing system has a common bus line
between input and output ports. Accordingly, this
topology makes it possible to remove the electricallyisolated transformer equipped by high-frequency link or
low frequency link[2].
ADVANTAGESAND DISADVANTADES
OF THE UPS
TOPOLCX~Y
WITH NO ELEC-TRICAL
ISOLATION
TRANSFORMER
LINK

As mentioned above, this circuit topology can reduce

the size and weight of the UPS. Furthermore, it is noted

480

that the total system composed of half-bridge type switchmode rectifier and half-bridge type sinewave PWM
inverter with output low pass filter has a extremely simple
configurations. The power switching devices incorporated
into the converter and inverter systems can be minimized
under the condition of low cost and two IGER modules.
The power convertion efficiency is high because of
simple circuit configuration.
However, because the sinewave PWM inverter has a
half-bridge topology, its DC input voltage VDC must be
at least 340V in order to supply lOOVrms by the halfbridge inverter. Concequently, this system topology makes

it necessary to connect a great number of storage batteries

in series. It is noted that this is a significant problem to
be improved on the basis of the UPS shown in Fig.3
because of reduced reliability and higher cost.

PROPOSED
Cf~currCONFIGURATION
WITH W O
QUADRANT BIDIRECTIONAL
CHOPPER
In order to improve the problem mentioned above,
the proposed UPS prototype with a bidirectional
switched-mode DC-DC converter operated under two
quadrant requirement is shown in Fig.4. The storage
THY SW

CO

Fig.1 Circr6t Configmtion of Conventional UPS

Inverter
I

THY SW
*

Fig2 SbDrtcirCUit Current Through the Bypass Circuit

Converter

Inverter

lQlooV

D2B2 C3
T4
Fig9 UPS Topology with No Ele-ctrical Isolation Link

481

batteries are coMected to the sinewave P W halfbridge-inverter via a bidirectional chopper circuit.
Bidirectional chopper circuit is consist of T5, T6, D5,
M,and L3.
The case the AC utility line is abruptly interrupted,
L3, T6, and D5 in this circuit operate as a step-up
chopper as shown in Fi&5(a). l3j- suitably controlling
the duty of T6, which operates at 20 kHz, a stable DC
voltage of 340 V is supplied to the inverter. As a result,
in this system configuration, the battery voltage can be
lowered[3].
On the other hand, the AC utility l i e is continuously
supplied, T5, U,and D6 in this circuit operate as a stepBy suitably
down chopper as shown in Fig.S(b).
controlling the duty of T5, which operates at 20 kHz,
storage batteries are charged at constant voltage and
constant current.
T5, T6, D5, and D6 can be made up of a single
IGBT module containiig two elements, which can be
easily mounted. Using an IGBT module with six
elements as shown in Figd, it is possible to build Tl-T6
and D1-D6 all with a single IGBT module. This type of
circuit was adopted for the 3 kVA Ups we developed.

chopper circuit supplies the UPS output current without

modifying it, the current waveform of reactor L3 in the
chopper circuit as..umes the form shown in Fig.8(a), in
which a high-frequency component is superposed on a
waveform that is a full-wave rectified sine wave. When
the UPS load is a capacitor-input rectified load, the

(a) O p e d o n as Step-up Chopper

ns

c2

'

(b) Operatian as Step-down Chopper

Fig.5. Opemtim of bidiredid chopper

CONTROLIMPLEMENTATIONOF THE CHOPPER

Cmm
Fig.7(a) shows a conventional stepup chopper
control circuit. The DC output voltage VDC is compared
with the reference voltage Vref, and its error signal Ver is
compared with the triangular wave of the modulation
frequency, thereby obtaining the PWM signal. In a circuit
configuration such as this, it is the DC output voltage that
is controlled. This type is thus voltage-mode control,
which leaves current uncontrolled.
Because the

432

Fig.6 IGBT Module with six Elements

current waveform of L3 is a pulse shape with a large

peak value, as shown in Fig.8(b). Preventing the
saturation of reactor requires using a reactor having a
large current capacity, which will in turn bring about
increased size, weight, and cost.
To solve this problem we adopted the current-mode
control circuit shown in Fig.7@). The DC output voltage
VDC is compared with the reference voltage Vref, and its
error signal Verl is compared with the current of reactor
L3, thereby obtaining error signal Ver2. Error signal
Ver2 is then compared with the triangular wave of the
modulation frequency to obtain the PWh4 signal. As the
amplifier that creates the error signal Verl, which is
compared to the current of reactor L3, has a
comparatively slow response, error signal Verl is a DC
voltage with almost no ripple. For this reason the
current of reactor L3 assumes the form shown in Fig.
8(c), which has almost no low-frequency ripple.
As the foregoing discussion demonstrates, using the
current-mode control circuit configuration shown in Fig.
7(b) made it possible to substantially hold down the peak
value of the current of reactor L3, and to decrease the
size, weight, and price of the reactor.
This Ups has the function of monitoring the charging
and discharging amounts of storage batteries, and shows
them on an LCD display. For this purpose it detects
battery current with a current sensor, and the current
sensor used to detect storage battery charging/
discharging amounts is the same current sensor

m m

MM

employed to detect reactor current and control the

chopper circuit.

"

180

360

(a) With VoltageMode Control

At Linear Load

"T

PWM

Phase (deg)

sigoal

(b) With Voltage-Mode Control

At Non Linear Load

VDC

circuit

34 T

Vref
(a) Voltage-Mode Control Circuit System

L3

270

Phase (deg)

PWh4

52

4
0

90

180

270

Phase (deg)
(c) With Current-Mode Control
Fig.8 Inductor Current Waveforms of
Step-up Chopper
@) Current-Mode Control Circuit System

Fig.7 Control Circuit System of

step-up b p p a

483

360

CONTROL m T E G I E S OF THE

USING

ACPU

Our developed 3kVA

UPS uses a &bit CPU in its

control circuit. Hg.9 is a block diagram of the CPU and
its peripheral circuits. The CPU receives voltage and
current information and HL signals from the main circuit,
and generates, among other things, the reference sine
waves for the converter and inverter.
In the circuit shown in Fig.lO(a), the reference sine
wave of the converter is compared with the current of the
reactor L1 and amplied, so the current of L1 is
instantaneous-value controlled in such a way that it is
always equivalent to the refmnce sine wave of the
converter. In the circuit shown in Fig.lO@), the
reference sine wave of the inverter is compared with the
output voltage and amplified, so the output voltage is
instantaneous-value controlled in such a way that it is
always equivalent to the reference sine wave of the
inverter.
constant-voltage control, constant-current
control, control of synchronization with commercial
voltage, and all other types of control necessary to
inverter are accomplished through CPU control of the
reference sine waves.

phase as input voltage, so the input power factor is

9%, and input current distortion is 3%.
Output voltage distortion is under 5% even with a
rectifier load. Because we were able to obtain high
efficiencies of 89% with the 3 kVA UPS, a small cooling
fan is sufficient, and noise is less than 40 phons.
Fig.13 shows the photograph of the UPS. It is
very small and light: the volume and weight of the 3
kVA U P S are 71.5 liters and 75 kg.
The 3 kVA UPS, opening the door reveals an LCD
display that provides a broad array of information such
as the voltage, current, and power of various sections,
plus the charging capacity of the storage batteries,
remaining discharge time, and the number of years left
until replacement is needed.
L1

PWM

Si&

Reference

9ne Wave

T1

LMM
(KlkHz
(a) Convater

GENERAL DESCRIPTION
OF THE

DEVELOPED
UPS
vout

3 kVA UPS incorporating the bidirectional chopper

shown in Fig.4 is developed.
Fig.11 shows the waveforms of the input voltage
and input current of the developed 3 kVA Ups. Input
current is undistorted sine wave of the same phase as
input voltage. Fig.12 shows the output voltage and
output current waveforms with a rectifier load. As the
figure shows, even if the current waveform is distorted
with a large crest factor, the output voltage is a sine
wave with little distortion.
Table 1 shows the characteristics of the Ups. As
shown in Fig.11, input ament is sine wave of the same

T3

6)Inverter
FIg.10 Control Circuit System

Reference
Sine waves

Voltage sigoals

cmalt signds

H/L Signals
WLsignds

To Display

NVRAM
Fig.9 Block D
m
i
of CPU and its P U i p h d Circuits

Larger : Input Voltage SOV/div 2msec/div

Smaller : Input Current 2ONdiv 2msec/div
Fig. 11 Waveforms of Input Voltage and
Input Current at rated input and output

220W S60H S8OL (71.Sliters 7Skg)

Fig.13 Exterior Overview of the new types of 3kVA
UPS Equipment

Larger : Output Voltage SOV/div 2msec/div

Smaller : Output Current SONdiv 2msec/div
Fig.12 Waveforms of Output Voltage and
Output Current at Non Linear Load

CONCLIJSION

The state-of-the art UPS incorporating simple halfbridge active ACDC converter and half-bridge PWM
inverter circuits with no electrical isolation power stage
ha5 attracted special interest recently. However, this
attractive UPS topology ha? significant disadvantage
that storage batteries have to be connected to the high
DC link bus.
We were able to overcome this
shortcoming without any substantial cost increase by
employing the circuit of bidirectional chopper. The 3
kVA UPS developed using the circuit configurations
made it possible to achieve excellent performance
including small size, light weight, high efficiency, high
power factor and low distortion.

TABLE1
~ C I E R l S I I C S
OF

Itcm

NE

LY

DEVELOPED
UPS

Charade*

h p r Voltagc

1 9 lcovso/6oHz

Input Powcr Fador

99%(al full load)

AT Input Currcnl THD

3%(a full load)

mtpur capacity

mJ$ut Voltagc
Voltagc Accuracy

Fqucncy Armracy

--

3kVA
_______

1 9 lOOVSO/(jOHz
within i 2%

within

0.1%

mtpul Voltagc Distortion

3.44b(al non lincar load) --~

ACiAC Eft-kicncy

89.1qal full load)

__

Ballcry Type

ScalcdLcad-Acid

__

Back up T i c

10 minutes

-.

Audiblc hbisc

I t s lhan 40 phon

~-

Dimcnsions

=OW 560H SBOL

WC*l

7Skg

REFERENCES
[ I ] Y . Sakamura, and Y . Nagai, "A(' Mini WS (IkVA) with a high
Frequency Switching Technology", IEIC'E of Japan, PE8749
[2] E;. Takemura, 11. Daishouji, E;. 'Teraoka, and T. Yamamoto, "A
Compact Unintermptible Power System, the FBK-SSU Series",
Sunken Technical Report Vo1.25 No.] pp 53-60,November 1993

[3] M. Sakane, I(. Hirachi, S. Niwa, T. Iwade, and M. Ishii,

"Development of 3kVA UPS Using Bidirectional chopper", Regular
Meeting of Japan Society for Power Electronics, August 1994

485