Permanent magnet electric generator with variable magnet flux excitation

A permanent magnet (PM) electric generator system with directly controllable field excitation control comprising:

• a prime mover;
• a main PM generator coupled to the prime mover comprising a PM rotor assembly with multiple PMs arranged around an outer axial periphery of the rotor assembly, a stator assembly comprising a ferromagnetic stator yoke, multiple ferromagnetic stator teeth mounted to the stator yoke with distal ends proximate the outer axial periphery of the rotor assembly separated by an air gap and multiple stator coils mounted between the stator teeth, multiple generally wedge-shaped saturable ferromagnetic shunts, each shunt mounting between adjacent distal ends of the stator teeth to shunt air gap magnetic flux Φg generated by the PMs across the air gap through the distal ends of the stator teeth;
• and multiple saturation control coils, each saturation control coil wrapped about a saturable region of an associated one of the shunts;
• a main power rectifier system for converting multiphase alternating current (AC) that the main PM stator coils generate to direct current (DC) main power on a DC power bus that feeds a DC load;
• an auxiliary power source;
• a control current regulator that regulates current from the auxiliary power source to produce control current Ic for the PM generator control coils;
• a main power voltage feedback loop that compares voltage on the DC power bus to a reference voltage and generates a reference control current signal representative of the difference;
• and
• a control current feedback loop that compares the control current to the control current reference signal and generates a control current regulating signal representative of the difference that changes the control current produced by the control current regulator.