C. Barnes, G. Diehl, T. Baudendistel, PC Krause and Associates, Inc; J. Potter, L. Burich, U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory
Using an air-cooled load bank in the high speed drive stand room at AFRL Building 18b Room 15 has presented several problems. It required significant floor space. It was designed only for 270VDC. It raised the temperature of the room to a high level due to its 82.5KW resistive load. Lastly, it applies a load in large 2.7kW steps. This presentation will cover a new 150KW load bank developed to address these issues.
The new load bank that was developed is water cooled to transport heat out of the drive stand room by using 30 5KW heater elements configured in three banks of 10. Each element is switched on or off by a controller built into the load bank to meet the loading requirements. Three of the elements are controlled by a Pulse Width Modulation (PWM) circuit to provide 20W steps in loading. The load bank is equipped with rectifiers and adaptor plates to accommodate various generator configurations including single phase AC, 3-phase AC, and DC voltages. In order to minimize floor space used, the load bank is wall mounted above the drive stand.
2008 SAE Power Systems Conference, November 11-13, 2008, Bellevue, WA