Performance comparison of single-phase power electronic controllers

This paper systematically investigates and compares the performance characteristics of different electronic voltage regulators used for the speed control of single-phase capacitor-run fan motor. The voltage regulators considered for comparison are triac based voltage regulator, single pulse width modulated (SPWM) ac chopper, and electronic transformer based voltage regulator. The performance comparison is made among these regulators on the aspects of power quality and energy saving. It is found that the electronic transformer based voltage regulator scheme has superior operating and performance characteristics as compared to the other schemes. Experimental results show that apart from improvement in performance with respect to input power factor and total harmonic distortion (THD) an appreciable amount of energy saving is also obtained in the electronic transformer based scheme.