Abstract: Voltage on a DC power bus is controlled using gated fixed energy pulses. The power bus includes a bus capacitor for storing charge and can have a varying load. A battery is provided for providing electrical power to the bus through a power boost circuit including a boost switch for selectively applying a pulse of a fixed amount of energy to the bus in response to comparison of the bus voltage and a first reference voltage. The power boost circuit can include a choke coil and a timer for establishing an on time and an off time for each pulse, the on time establishing the amount of energy to be delivered to the bus, and the off time allowing the energy to be delivered to the load. A shunt path including a shunt switch can be provided for shunting energy from the bus when the bus voltage reaches a second reference voltage higher than the first reference voltage. In a preferred embodiment, the shunt path shunts energy to the battery for recharging the battery.

Abstract: A bidirectional power converter array has overall voltage feedback, an error signal generator, and plural bidirectional power converter modules. Each module of the array includes a series inductor and local feedback based upon the inductor current. Each module also has a resistive current sensor, providing wideband local feedback. A low-pass filter is coupled to the current sensing resistor to reduce switching noise. The low-pass filter also reduces the bandwidth of the local feedback signal, so interactions with the overall feedback occur, which may result in instability. A winding transformer-coupled to the series inductor generates AC signal representing high-frequency components of the inductor current, relatively free of switching noise. The AC current sample is added to the low-frequency components derived from the resistor and low-pass filter, to form a low-noise local feedback signal, with sufficient bandwidth to reduce unwanted interactions with the overall system feedback.