Interface, black box snapshot drives 1.3kW AC-DC series
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XP Power has developed a 1.3kW fully digital, configurable, modular AC-DC power supply series with a new interface for power engineers.
The FLXPro series starts with the FLX1K3 configurable 1U chassis providing up to 1.3kW of AC-DC power with a power density of 1.416W/cm³ (23.2W/in³).
A key element of the system is the XPInsight user interface. This has been developed using human-centred design (HCD) principles to simplify system configuration, monitoring, and control, and has advanced capabilities like graphing, datalogging and simultaneous multi-unit display.
“Our Nanoflex 1U 1200W launched in 2015 has been very successful especially in Europe but in ten years the market has moved and the expectations have moved, We talked to over 30 customers and they were asking for more power in the same size,” Simon Wheeler, vice president of product management tells eeNews Europe.
“But what they were also asking for was adjustability of all the output modules without sacrificing emissions. We have looked at the topology of the power supply for the custom modules with different nominal output voltages but each one of them is configurable. The topologies are chosen for the maximum efficiency across the widest range with a mixture of LLC and active clamp.”
“But one of the key areas is the interface,” said Wheeler. “User interfaces are in many cases like the wild, wild west.”
This HCD-optimised UI facilitates fast, quality decisions regarding the power supply application state and provides intuitive status, health and configuration information. It also incorporates multi-level password protection and cybersecurity features for improved security.
This helps the developers of healthcare, industrial applications, semiconductor manufacturing, analytical instrumentation, automation, renewable energy systems, and robotics systems speed up their projects by quickly configuring the power system.
“The intelligent power and ease of use are all pulled together. Data is useless unless you can make fast decisions. What we have done is work out how to interpret that data for actionable information, and we’ve not seen anyone else focus on that before,” he said.
The AC-DC supply, built in Vietnam, uses both silicon carbide (SiC) and gallium nitride (GaN) devices to reduce the size to 254.0mm x 88.9mm x 40.6mm (10.0” x 3.50” x 1.6”) as well as providing 1.3kW at high line conditions and 1kW at low line. The low line performance is important for global operation at 115V, says Wheeler
The digital architecture covers both the power factor correction input stage with SiC FETs at roughly 400V and a variable frequency with SiC and GaN in the back end modules
“We do multiple modules as the variants but we enable the customer to vary the output to their individual needs. For example this could be a 12V supply but with 0.8V drop so we can customise that to 12.8V which is not easy to do in legacy designs. We have a digital trim pot and the ability to disable it for security, but can also do that through the UI or the comms, and we can also pre-configure the output.”
Black box snapshot
The digital architecture also enables a ‘black box’ snapshot capability that stores up to three minutes of data in non-volatile FRAM memory in the event of a shutdown using the holdup voltage. “We are putting 50 parameters into that with the internal diagnostic time stamps. What really makes it different is we have a rolling three minutes of data so we can trend voltage, fan speed etc,” said Wheeler.
“You can put four of these together, so if a particular module is always having to shut down it gives more data about the application so that provides a window into the health of the application. Each shutdown event has the three minutes of data and the shutdown event, that is one snapshot. We have the ability to record in NVM four of those snapshot event.”
For example, in a system where mobile robots are docking with a charging station, there can be multiple shutdowns during the day. Having four separate snapshots shows any trends in the failure modes.
“Having a fully digital architecture is critical as they are asking for the data and the ability to integrate that data,” he said.
Up to eight of the AC-DC units can be synchronised at startup to avoid ringing, although six can be used in parallel with current sharing. This means in a four slot chassis developers can parallel all four, says Wheeler.
The FLXPro AC-DC series supports ES1 isolated digital communications which improves application safety while reducing integration complexity and supply damage risks. FLXPro uses PMBus over I²C for digital communications, enabling real-time control, monitoring, and datalogging. Standard external connectivity is provided for output modules and the system chassis including AC OK, DC OK, remote inhibit (global/module), fan fail/temp warning, sync, and current share.
The series also conform to medical and ITE safety approvals, including 2 x MOPP isolation for medical applications. The series is SEMI F47 compliant and meets various immunity and emissions standards, including EN61000-4 immunity and EN55011/EN55032 Class B for conducted and radiated emissions. Conformance to these regulatory requirements means a single product can cover a wide range of applications, resulting in lower design costs. It operates over a wide temperature range of -20°C to +70°C.
www.xppower.com/product/FLXPro-Series
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