Spare bus power plant
AssigneeJomahip, LLC
InventorJoseph M. McAndrews
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
A DC power plant system is provided utilizing battery back up for emergency power for use with telephone switching equipment or other loads, whereby the system provides for a more efficient use of the DC rectifiers and allows a standby emergency power source to be sized to fit only the actual load rectifiers which will reduce the cost of the emergency standby power system.
Claims17
A system for supplying uninterrupted DC power to a load to which DC power normally is derived from an AC power source or from an emergency AC power source and a plurality of DC batteries are provided to deliver the DC power to the load when AC power fails to be available, comprising:
- a load bus;
- a bank of load rectifiers connected to said load bus, responsive to AC power from said AC power sources to respectively produce DC power for delivery along said load bus to the load;
- a spare bus;
- a bank of spare rectifiers connected to said spare bus, responsive to said AC power sources to respectively produce DC power for delivery along said spare bus;
- a blocking circuit coupling said spare bus to said load bus so as to enable current to flow from a said spare rectifier through said blocking circuit when the magnitude of the DC voltage on the load bus drops a predetermined amount below that on the spare bus;
- and
- a controller coupled to sense the voltage on the load bus and from said AC power sources to produce a control signal to enable a spare rectifier upon a failure of a said load rectifier.
The system of claim 7 wherein the controller stores information in memory regarding the total number of rectifier failures.
A system for supplying uninterrupted DC power to a load to which DC power normally is derived from an AC power source or from an emergency AC power source and a plurality of DC batteries are provided to deliver the DC power to the load when AC power fails to be available, comprising:
- a load bus;
- a bank of load rectifiers connected to said load bus, responsive to AC power from said AC power sources to respectively produce DC power for delivery along said load bus to the load;
- a bank of spare rectifiers connected to said load bus, responsive to said AC power sources to respectively produce DC power for delivery along said spare bus;
- a reference voltage control circuit coupling said load bus to a reference voltage input of a spare rectifier so as to connect said load bus to said reference voltage input when the magnitude of the DC voltage on the load bus drops a predetermined level;
- and
- a controller coupled to sense the voltage on the load bus and from said AC power sources to produce a control signal to enable a spare rectifier upon a failure of a said load rectifier.
A method for supplying uninterrupted DC power to a load along a load bus to which DC power normally is derived from an AC power source or from an emergency AC power source and a plurality of DC batteries are provided to deliver the DC power to the load when AC power fails to be available comprising the steps of:
- providing a bank of rectifiers and segregating the rectifiers into load and spare rectifiers with the load rectifiers connected to the load bus to provide DC power thereto at a desired DC output voltage;
- providing a spare bus to which the spare rectifiers are connected and with the spare bus selectively connected to the load bus to provide spare DC power thereto from the spare rectifiers;
- adjusting the output voltages of the spare rectifiers so that selected ones are effectively taken off line and at least one of said spare rectifiers has an output voltage that is at a predetermined minimum voltage level for the load bus;
- monitoring the load bus so as to detect when a load rectifier has failed;
- adjusting the voltage level of the spare rectifiers in accordance with failed load rectifiers to enable a spare rectifier to provide DC power to the load and effectively become a load rectifier.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.