Proposals for power conditioning systems of high power communication satellites

For several years the German Ministry of Research and Technology (BMFT) sponsored investigations to realize large communication satellites, and to develop hardware of special critical components. The developments in the field of energy supply were a main effort. Power conditioning systems up to 10 kW are required. On principle it is possible to realize power conditioning for this large power range on the basis of DC-systems. But there rises problems relating to parts and weight closely associated with the thermal control system. To find a better solution several firms in Germany (AEG-Telefunken, Dornier System AG, Siemens AG and Teldix GmbH) investigated power conditioning concepts with AC distribution in the frequency range of about 20 kHz. First results indicated that even with an AC-system it is not possible to find a fundamental solution of the above mentioned problems, AC-systems seem to present certain advantages, though. In this paper some results of the developments of power conditioning concepts for a high power communication satellite are discussed. It is shown that an AC-system with regulated sinusoidal mainbus voltage is flexible and suited for high power applications. But for special applications decentralized current resonance systems may be better suited due to their high efficiency.