High Power Density, and Efficient on Board Auxiliary Power Generation System

Power generation at remote locations is increasingly important to provide support for logistic and combat operations. The traditional genset driven by a diesel engine, however, is bulky, not highly efficient, and requires non-trivial maintenance. In addition, the power quality that these traditional gensets supply is not sufficient for many field applications. Thus, a compact, yet high efficiency auxiliary power generation system integral to the tracked or wheeled military vehicle, at the 4 kW power level, is an essential new component to aid the warfighter. This advanced generator and power control unit makes use of direct cooled lamination paramagnet magnet motor technology and a proprietary interphase transformer technique using sub-phases controlled by a digital signal processor. The proposed Phase I effort will investigate the feasibility of developing such on-board auxiliary power generation system. The advanced on-board auxiliary power generation system (APGS) will have a higher efficiency, lower harmonic distortion, lower electromagnetic interference, in addition to the greatly lower volume and weight advantages. AeroVironment will overcome the many technical challenges leveraging experience from recent generator, inverter, and digital control development projects.