Buck Regulator Power Supply for Plasma Applications
Phase II SBIR DOE Contract DEFG-02-99-ER82777
Contract Period: Q3 2000 - Q3 2004

Future commercial scale fusion power experiments are expected to operate at total power levels of 10-100 MW and pulse lengths from five seconds to continuous operation. These systems will require enormous levels of high voltage power for their auxiliary heating systems.

Conventional RF power control technologies require multiple levels of power conversion between the power grid and the RF amplifier (gyrotron or klystron). They rely on multiple levels of inefficient and expensive transformers, SCR control systems, rectifiers, series pass elements, and crowbars.

In this SBIR, DTI is developing buck regulator power supplies and solid state switches that permit transformerless conversion of MegaWatts of utility power to controlled RF. They enable dramatic improvements over conventional DC power systems in virtually every dimension of interest - cost, size, weight, footprint, energy storage, regulation speed, and efficiency.

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