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What Is Voltage Stabilizer & How It Works? Types of Stabilizers
What Is Voltage Stabilizer & How It Works? Types of Stabilizers
it Works?
Introduction to Stabilizer:
This also led to make the trip timing or responsiveness of the stabilizers to a
very less rate, typically less than a few milliseconds, in addition this can be
adjusted with variable setting. Nowadays, stabilizers became an optimized
power solution to many electronic appliances that are sensitive to voltage
fluctuations and they have found working with many devices such as CNC
machines, air conditioners, television sets, medical equipment, computers,
telecommunication equipments, and so on.
Voltage stabilizers regulate the fluctuating input voltage before it could be fed
to the load (or equipment which is sensitive to voltage variations). The output
voltage from the stabilizer will stay in the range of 220V or 230V in case of
single phase supply and 380V or 400V in case of three phase supply, within
given fluctuating range of input voltage. This regulation is carried by buck
and boost operations performed by internal circuitry.
There are huge varieties of automatic voltage regulators are available in
today’s market. These can be single or three-phase units as required by the
type of application and capacity (KVA) needed. Three-phase stabilizers come
in two versions as balanced load models and unbalanced load models.
The voltage fluctuations (rise or dip of the magnitude of rated voltage) are
quite common in many areas, especially at terminated lines. The most
common reasons for voltage fluctuations are lighting, electrical faults, faulty
wiring and periodic turning off the device. These fluctuations create mishap
to the electrical equipments or appliances.
So the voltage stability and accuracy decide the correct operation of the
equipment. Voltage stabilizers therefore ensure that the voltage fluctuations
at the incoming power supply does not affect the load or electrical appliance.
How Voltage Stabilizer Works?
The figure above illustrates the boosting configuration in which the polarity
of the secondary winding is oriented in such a way that its voltage is directly
added to the primary voltage. Therefore, in case of under voltage condition,
transformer (whether it can be tap changing or autotransformer) is switched
by the relays or solid state switches such that additional volts are appended to
the input voltage.
The figure above shows two stage voltage stabilizer which uses two relays to
provide constant AC supply to the load during overvoltage and under voltage
conditions. By switching the relays, buck and boost operations for two
specific voltage fluctuations (one is under voltage, for instance, say 195V and
another for overvoltage, say 245V) can be performed.
It has electronic circuit and set of relays besides the transformer (which can
be toroidal or iron core transformer with tappings provided on its secondary).
The electronic circuit comprises rectifier circuit, operational amplifier,
microcontroller unit, and other tiny components.
The electronic circuit compares the output voltage with a reference value
provided by built-in reference voltage source. Whenever the voltage rises or
falls beyond reference value, the control circuit switches the corresponding
relay to connect a desired tapping to the output.
These stabilizers usually change the voltage for input voltage variations of ±15
percent to ±6 percent with output voltage accuracy of ±5 to ±10 percent. This
type of stabilizers is most popularly used for low rating appliances in
residential, commercial and industrial applications as they are of low weight
and low cost. However, these are suffering with several limitations such as
slow voltage correction speed, less durability, less reliability, interruption to
power path during regulation, and unable to withstand high voltage surges.
As the name suggests, static voltage stabilizer doesn’t have any moving parts
as a servo motor mechanism in case of servo stabilizers. It uses power
electronic converter circuit to achieve voltage regulation rather than a variac
in case of conventional stabilizers. It is possible to produce greater accuracy
and excellent voltage regulation by these stabilizers compared with servo
stabilizers, and typically regulation is of ±1 percent.
It essentially consists of buck boost transformer, IGBT power converter (or
AC to AC converter), and microcontroller, microprocessor, or DSP based
controller. Microprocessor controlled IGBT converter generates the
appropriate amount of voltage by pulse width modulation technique, and this
voltage is supplied to the primary of the buck boost transformer. The IGBT
converter produces the voltage in such a way that it can be in phase or 180
degrees out of phase incoming line voltage, in order to perform adding and
subtracting voltages during fluctuations.
Whenever microprocessor detects the voltage dip, it sends the PWM pulses to
the IGBT converter such that it generates the voltage which is equal to that of
the deviated amount from nominal value. This output is in phase with
incoming supply and is supplied to the primary of buck boost transformer.
Since the secondary is connected to the incoming line, the induced voltage
will be added to the incoming supply and this corrected voltage is supplied to
the load.
Similarly, the voltage rise causes the microprocessor circuit to send PWM
pulses in such a way that converter will output a deviated amount voltage,
which is 180 degrees out of phase with incoming voltage. This voltage at the
secondary of the buck boost transformer gets subtracted from the input
voltage so that buck operation is performed.
These stabilizers are very popular compared with tap changing and servo
controlled stabilizers because of the wide variety of advantages such as
compact size, very fast correction speed, excellent voltage regulation, no
maintenance due to the absence of moving parts, high efficiency and high
reliability.
A major but confusing question is raised here that what is the exactly
difference(s) between Stabilizer and Regulator? Well.. Both perform
same action which is to stabilize the voltage but the main difference
between voltage stabilizer and voltage regulator is:
Check the power rating of the apparatus that which you are going to be
used with a stabilizer, by observing the nameplate details (Here are the
samples: Transformer Nameplate, MCB Nameplate, Capacitor
nameplate etc) or from product user manual.
Since the stabilizers are rated in kVA (Same as the case as Transformer
rated in kVA instead of kW), it is also possible to calculate the wattage by
simply multiplying voltage of the appliance by maximum rated current.
It is recommended to add a safety margin to stabilizer rating, typically a
20-25 percent. This could be useful for future plans to add more devices
to the stabilizer output.
If the appliance is rated in watts, consider a power factor while
calculating kVA rating of stabilizer. On the contrary, if stabilizers are
rated in kW instead of kVA, multiply the power factor with voltage and
current product.
below is the live ans solved Example that how to select proper sized voltage
stabilizer for your electrical appliance(s)
Hope that the furnished information is informative and useful for the reader.
We want readers to express their views on this topic and answer this simple
question – what is the purpose of RS232/RS485 communication feature in
modern voltage stabilizers, in the comment section below.