Permeance Based Design and Analysis of Supercapacitor Assisted Surge Absorber for Magnetic Component Selection

Supercapacitor assisted surge absorber (SCASA) technique is a unique and commercially useful design approach for surge protector devices. SCASA topology is based on the combination of a coupled inductor, which partly acts as a transformer, and a supercapacitor (SC) subcircuit. In developing the first commercial product, the research team had to optimize the selection of the magnetic core, based on empirical approaches and industry price constraints. This article presents a permeance-based design and analytical approach to SCASA, with the topological details of its first successful implementation. While existing SCASA topology performs satisfactorily, this article elucidates design techniques to improve surge absorption by 60% and reduce load clamping by 10% based on high-performance prototypes developed using High-Flux and X-Flux toroids. The test results presented in this research are validated by experimental work carried out in a high-voltage surge laboratory using Noiseken LSS-6230 lightning surge simulator adhering to IEEE C62.41/IEC 61000-4-5 standards. Surge immunity of SCASA prototypes was evaluated using international test procedures of UL-1449 3rd edition standard.