M. Rico-Secades

University of Oviedo | UNIOVI · Department of Electrical, Electronic, Computers and Systems Engineering

The current study represents a preliminary step towards detecting operating problems in wind microturbines automatically. The electrical frequency signal generated by the turbine allows for the detection of operating issues during its power stage. To conduct a comprehensive study, a vertical-axis microturbine has been tested, under various failure...

The internet of things is a novel concept with many applications, one of them is the management of energy in smart power systems, which is known as the Internet of Energy (IoE). This research presents an autonomous system — based on IoE concept — for monitoring and controlling a water supply network using a renewable power generation set formed by...

Water distribution networks are key infrastructures that could be used as a renewable source of energy. This could be possible due to the use of small vertical axis turbines and new control electronic devices. This abstract shows a practical example of a quality and quantity water control system that is energetically supplied by a hydrokinetic turb...

The enormous inroads made by renewable energy in recent years have been the key to the development of new technologies designed to obtain energy from a range of resources. Hydrokinetic microturbines used to harness kinetic energy from rivers, tidal and marine currents epitomize such developments. As the reservoir is dispensed with, the water footpr...

The present project aims to design the control and monitoring system for a test bench that will help to calculate the power level that can be extracted from wind vertical axis hydrokinetic microturbines. The workbench includes a hydraulic system calculated to, through a recirculation between two tanks, achieve high fluid speed in the canal, and the...

Street lighting still faces some challenges, e.g., reducing power consumption, lowering light pollution, and making adaptive luminaires more effective among many other concerns. It is evident that the arrival of light-emitting diodes (LEDs) in lighting systems has altered the state-of-the-art and design strategies in lighting. In a traditional appr...

This paper sets out to explore and promote the use of a hydrokinetic microturbine module designed to obtain energy from water streams. It is made up of a hydrokinetic rotor, a permanent magnet generator, power electronic stages and a microcontroller to regulate power production. It is further complemented by a control strategy focused on maximizing...

Tidal energy has significant potential yet to be developed. Sizeable investments, operating costs and environmental impact are barriers that have to date restricted its development. However, microturbine arrays which are viable in coastal locations can help minimize the initial investment as well as operating costs and environmental impact. This pa...

The purpose of this project is to analyze the technical possibilities of implementing a sustainable gym, where all the electric energy generated by sport machines, is injected into the grid. In a first phase it will be include electric generators to the static bicycles based on permanents magnets generators (PMG), so that all the energy is injected...

A hydrokinetic smart grid (KSG) concept powered by modules of hydrokinetic microturbines arranged in rows is proposed in this work. A complete description of each module: mechanical design, hydropower characteristics, power electronics and control strategies have been included. A complete dynamic simulation of an example of a KSG has been performed...

Smart Grids are a hot topic with hundreds of applications and different approaches. In the present paper, the proposed system integrates street lighting, renewable energy sources, energy storage devices and inverter connected to the mains. With this in mind, the Smart Grid can be considered not only as an energy consumer/generator but also as a gri...

In this paper, a modified droop control combined with power-line signaling is applied to several public dc street/road lighting microgrids with microgeneration and storage capability. The idea is to communicate low-level microgrid's main converter with the battery management system (BMS) injecting a high-frequency signal into the dc bus. Depending...

Lighting Systems are suffering and important evolution with the introduction of LED lighting systems with new strategies of energy savings, incorporation of renewable energy sources and optionally a bidirectional interconnection with the mains (AC grid or DC interconnection bus). Lighting Systems are moving to Lighting Smart Grids and step by step...

Lighting Systems are suffering an important evolution, due to the incorporation of LED lighting, renewable energy and energy storage capability moving to Lighting Smart Grids (LSG) where efficiency and flexibility are two important requirements looking for energy efficiency. Adaptability of light taking into account geometric dimensions from the ta...

Tidal energy to obtain electrical energy is yet an unexploited renewable energy. Existing generator designs and prototypes are not feasible due to the high investment conditioned by their high rated powers and off-shore locations. In addition, these prototypes are not readily available. This investigation presents a design of a microgeneration syst...

Urban lighting networks represent a very substantial infrastructure and distributed along the cities. Also, it is well known that the energy consumed in urban lighting is an impressive volume, both in energy and economic terms. In this context the work lines in Lighting Smart Grids (LSG) suggest the introduction of energy efficiency strategies, usi...

The WRE is an offer for students projects (degree, master, pre-doc (PhD) or pos-doc), to be performed in a multidisciplinary context around Renewable Energy and Environmental Issues. WRE is running since 2010. WRE is based on a methodology of project-based learning (PBL) and seeks to promote teamwork, multidisciplinary, technical proficiency in Eng...

The purpose of this paper is think over lighting systems in the context of energy efficiency and incorporation of renewable energy sources and energy storage capabilities. In this new context Lighting Systems becomes a mixture of distributed load with regulation capability, a distributed energy generation system and, simultaneously, a distributed e...

The port of Avilés is very tightly integrated in the city of Avilés. Within the waters of the port there is significant tidal activity. The possibility of extracting this tidal energy and using it locally to provide services for citizens and port activities is a topic of great interest. Despite the low viability of current tidal energy installation...

In the prior literature, the small-signal incremental impedance of fluorescent lamps has been characterized using a single-pole single-zero transfer function. This transfer function provides a good estimation of the lamp dynamics at rated power. However, when this model is used at low power levels, the accuracy is severely reduced, particularly at...

This paper deals with the capability of pulse width modulation (PWM) dimming operation added to the high-power factor-integrated buck-flyback converter (IBFC), which was developed in previous works for LED lighting applications. First, the two main dimming techniques will be introduced, namely, analog dimming and PWM dimming. Then, the three main P...

In this paper the integrated double buck-boost (IDBB) converter operating with both stages in discontinuous conduction mode (DCM) is analyzed. The converter is intended to supply high voltage LED lamps from the mains, typically in street lighting applications. A high input power factor is assured by operating the first stage in DCM, thus verifying...

One important aspect for the design of dimming ballasts for fluorescent lamps is the output power range that can be obtained. Some applications require that the output power can be reduced below 10%. However, in some ballast designs, there is no easy way to reduce the output power to the required minimum level without finding instabilities that cou...

Due to the high rise in luminous efficiency that high-brightness light-emitting diodes (HB-LEDs) have experienced in recent years, many new applications have been researched. This paper covers a streetlight LED application using the offline integrated buck-flyback converter (IBFC) developed in previous works. In this application, the converter is u...

This paper deals with the capability of dimming operation added to the Integrated Buck-Flyback Converter (IBFC) topology developed in previous works. Firstly, the three main dimming methods that have been identified by the authors such as enable dimming, shunt dimming and series dimming will be briefly commented. Afterwards, the IBFC topology will...

In this chapter we have started to explore the possibilities of modern LED lighting for computer vision. The results obtained are very promising but further research has to be conducted. The first drawback was the LED module used and the number of them mounted on the PCB. For future work we are going to look for a more powerful module and we should...

In pattern recognition systems the lighting method is critical to determine the success or failure of an algorithm. The goal of this work is to design a lighting workbench able to control the color and luminous flux allowing the vision systems programmers to verify the robustness of their algorithms. This paper describes the methodology to control...

The use of high-efficiency LEDs in low-power lighting applications is growing continuously due to new advances in LED features. The lifetime of a low-power fluorescent lamp is around 5000 h. This implies short lamp-replacement times and high maintenance costs. The use of high-efficiency LEDs reduces drastically the maintenance costs due to the long...

Usually, pulsewidth modulation (PWM) operation is selected as the best dimming strategy to drive high-brightness LEDs. Nevertheless, to obtain an enhanced full linear dimming control of the device, the luminous flux should be measured. This paper proposes a control method based on an estimator of the luminous flux emitted by the LED. Based on the c...

Due to the high rise in luminous efficiency that HB-LEDs have experienced in the last recent years, many new applications have been researched. In this paper, a streetlight LED application will be covered, using the integrated buck-flyback converter developed in previous works, which performs power factor correction (PFC) from a universal AC source...

When a researcher faces the problem of developing a computer vision application there are many problems that have to be solved. Among those problems, we find the study of the proper illumination conditions of the scene. The way the objects are illuminated is so critical that it affects all the elements in the analysis chain. Generally the lights ar...

Acoustic resonances (AR) appear in High Frequency operation of metal halide lamps. Among the supply techniques to minimize this phenomenon, high frequency non resonant (HFNR) inverters appear as a suitable approach. Unfortunately, the effect of the necessary series igniter causes the lamp waveforms not to be perfectly square. This behavior inserts...

Since the high rise in luminous flux power LEDs have experienced in the last years, they have become an overcoming alternative to incandescent bulbs for automotive signal lamps, and even an interesting choice for automotive headlamps, as most recent prototypes has shown, since the performance is near to that of HID lamps. This rise in luminous flux...

Usually, PWM operation is selected to drive High Brightness LEDs, because the dimming behavior is more linear than in DC operation. Nevertheless, to obtain an enhanced operation of the device (full output light control), the luminous flux should be measured. This paper proposes a control method based on an estimator of the luminous flux emitted by...

The use of high efficiency leds in low power lighting applications is growing continuously due to new advances in led features. The lifetime of low power fluorescent lamp is around 5.000 hours. This implies short lamp-replacement times and high maintenance costs. The use of high efficiency leds reduces drastically the maintenance costs due to the l...

In this paper, a new control method for electronic ballasts based on the use of a variable inductor is presented. The main goal is to perform the complete control of the electronic ballast by maintaining the switching frequency constant and without using other parameters of the power converter, such as input voltage or duty cycle. The magnetic regu...

This paper describes the complete design and implementation procedures of a low-cost digital controller for a High Efficiency LED driver, using supercapacitors as the primary power sources. The main advantages of these Power LEDs are the high luminosity, high efficiency and long operating life. Due to these improved behaviour, the number of LED-bas...

Discharge lamps present a negative dynamic characteristic that makes necessary to use a current limiting element. In high-frequency resonant ballasts, current limitation is performed by the output resonant tank; but in low-frequency square-wave electronic ballasts, arc stabilization is accomplished by the stage feeding the square wave inverter. The...

The use of power LED is growing continuously, due to new advances and new devices with performances which increase day after day. Nowadays, a topic of interest in this context is the search for electronic converters in order to take advantage of LED performances. LEDs ballast design involves a multidisciplinary knowledge: photometric, thermal, powe...

This paper describes a complete design and implementation of a low cost digital controller for a high power LED driver. The main advantages of high efficiency LEDs are their good luminosity, efficiency and long life. Due to these improved behaviour, the number of LED-based applications is increasing. Nowadays, the cost of digital processors is cont...

In this paper, a study about acoustic resonance (AR) in low-wattage metal halide lamps is presented. The lamps are supplied with a typical low frequency square waveform on which a high frequency sinusoidal ripple is superposed. The goal is to emulate the same waveforms generated by a low frequency electronic ballast. In this way, the ARs that appea...

The use of piezoelectric transformers in electronic ballasts has been widely discussed in recent literature. In most of the applications, the piezoelectric transformer substitutes all the resonant tank components of a half-bridge resonant inverter. However, designing the inverter to keep zero-voltage-switching in all the operating range is difficul...

The use of power LED is growing continuously, due to new advances and new devices with performances which are improving day by day. Nowadays, a topic of interest in this context is the search for electronic converters in order to take advantage of LED performances. This paper evaluates the use of tapped-converters as LED drivers. These topologies a...

A non-resonant electronic ballast based on one power switch and on one reactive element-one inductance-is described in this paper. The special current mode control implementation provides an intrinsic short-circuit protection and a very simple control circuitry. Filament heating time, current during the heating period, and protection against broken...

High intensity discharge (HID) lamps are the most suitable when both high light power levels and good color rendering are researched. Some remarkable theoretical advantages would be obtained if these kinds of lamps were driven with high frequency (HF) electronic ballasts. Nevertheless, at these frequencies, acoustic resonances (AR) phenomenon appea...

Currently, the main drawback in high-intensity discharge lamps supplied by means of high-frequency (HF) electronic ballasts are the so-called acoustic resonances. In this paper, two HF nonresonant inverters for low wattage metal halide (MH) lamps are analyzed, from the point of view of its behavior regarding the acoustic resonances' phenomenon. Thu...

This paper presents a novel single-stage electronic ballast with high power factor. The ballast circuit is based on the integration of a buck converter to provide the power factor correction and a flyback converter to control the lamp power and to supply the lamp with a low frequency square-waveform current. Both converters work in discontinuous co...

In this paper a new control method for electronic ballasts based on using magnetic regulators is presented. The main goal is to perform the complete control of the electronic ballast maintaining constant switching frequency and without using other parameters of the transistor bridge, as the input voltage or the duty cycle. The magnetic regulator is...

Nowadays, Permanent Emergency Lighting Systems (PELSs) are widely used in many applications, including emergency exit indication and lighting in critical or strategic points. Limitation in operation hours in classical lamps (10 000-20 000 h for fluorescent lamps) implies short lamp replacement times and, therefore, high maintenance costs. This pape...

This paper deals with the use of microprocessor-based control circuits in automotive and railway lighting applications. Thus, the design and implementation of an electronic ballast for fluorescent lamps using a low-cost microcontroller (μC) is presented. The ballast has been especially developed for lighting applications in railways, where the Inte...

In this paper, a low-cost power control for LCC series-parallel inverters with resonant current mode control for high intensity discharge (HID) lamps is presented. These resonant inverters require controlling the power supplied to the lamp in order to avoid exceeding the maximum lamp power recommended by the lamp manufacturer. The classical control...

In this paper, a low-cost PFC electronic ballast for 250 W high intensity discharge (HID) lamps based on the using of LCC parallel-series inverter with resonant current mode control operating as constant power source with 400 kHz switching frequency is presented. With this control method, the inverter does not hand any reactive energy, and both swi...

In this paper, a novel topology to supply metal halide (MH) lamps using sinusoidal waveform with superposed third harmonic is proposed. By employing this technique, the lamp is supplied with an approximated square waveform, but it reduces the harmonic content and, therefore, electromagnetic interference and radio-frequency interference. The propose...

In this paper, a low-cost electronic ballast for high-pressure sodium vapor lamps is presented. The proposed ballast is a two-stage circuit that requires only one switch and one inductor for each stage. The power-factor-correction stage is a buck dc-to-dc converter operating in discontinuous conduction mode to meet the IEC-61000-3-2 Class C require...

The first LED diode was made around 1962 (red LED by Holonyank & Bevacqua). These initial LEDs and posterior developments are widely used in very-low lighting level applications. Ternary and quaternary alloys are the bases of the present high-brightness LED's. Currently power LEDs are used in low-medium lighting applications: for instance, permanen...

Nowadays, permanent emergency lighting systems (PELS) are widely used in many applications: emergency exit indication, lighting in critical or strategic points. Limitation in operation hours in classical lamps (10.000-20.000 hours for fluorescent lamps) implies short lamp replacement times and, therefore, high maintenance costs. This paper shows a...

A low-cost high-frequency power supply for ozone generation is presented in this paper. The paper addresses two important issues. Firstly, the ozone reactor is tested at high frequency and a new model of this type of load is proposed. Secondly, the power supply stage is presented and analyzed, obtaining some important characteristics that allow the...

A novel single-stage high-power-factor electronic ballast obtained from the integration of a buck DC-to-DC converter and a half-bridge resonant inverter is analyzed in this paper. The buck converter is operated in discontinuous conduction mode and at constant frequency providing an input power factor high enough to satisfy present standard requirem...

In this paper the current-fed parallel-resonant inverter for low-medium power electrodischarge applications is investigated. The behavior of the inverter when operating with constant input current or variable input current is studied as a solution for controlling the output power by using switching frequency as control parameter. The goal of this s...

High intensity of discharge (HID) lamps is the most suitable lamps when it comes to get both high light power levels and good colour rendering. In HID lamps, a lot of theoretical advantages are obtained if they are supplied with high frequencies electronic ballasts: higher efficiency, optimisation of system cost, weight and size, control and remote...

Nowadays, one of the main drawbacks in lighting electronics is the appearance of acoustic resonances in HID lamps. In this paper, a new electronic inverter for HID lamps is presented. This inverter provides a high frequency quasi-square current waveform to the lamp. As it is not an ideal waveform, some power harmonics are present in the power frequ...

Nowadays, permanent emergency lighting systems (PELS) are widely used in many applications: emergency exit indication, lighting in critical or strategic points. Limitation in operation hours in classical lamps (10000-20000 hours for fluorescent lamps) implies short lamp replacement times and, therefore, high maintenance costs. This paper shows an a...

In this paper, an advanced design of a low-cost electronic ballast with PFC for HPS lamps is presented. The inverter stage is based on LCC parallel-series inverter with resonant current mode control. This control method avoids the inverter handling any reactive energy, minimizing both switching and conduction losses. Also, the design performs a nat...

In this paper, a new current control method is applied to a nonresonant, quasi-square wave inverter used to supply HID lamps at high frequency. The chosen control method is previously compared to several current mode and voltage mode control methods. The selection criteria in order to choose a control method are stabilization of the ballast-lamp sy...

In this paper, the optimum design of a LCC parallel-series inverter with resonant current mode control for 250 W high pressure sodium vapor lamps is presented. This control method avoids the inverter handling any reactive energy, minimizing both switching and conduction losses. Also, the design performs a natural power control without exceeding the...

In this paper, a low cost power control for LCC series-parallel inverters with resonant current mode control for HID lamps is presented. These kind of resonant inverters require controlling the power supplied to the lamp without exceeding the maximum power recommended by the manufacturer. The classical method measures the voltage and current of the...

This paper proposes a single-stage electronic ballast for high-intensity discharge lamps. The ballast consists of the integration of a boost converter in discontinuous conduction mode (DCM) and a full-bridge LCC resonant inverter. The boost semi-stage working in DCM functions as a power factor corrector and the inverter semi-stage operated above re...

Discharge lamps present a negative dynamic characteristic that makes necessary using a current limiting element. In high frequency resonant ballasts current limitation is performed by the output resonant tank, but in low-frequency square-wave electronic ballasts arc stabilization is accomplished by stage feeding the square wave inverter. Therefore,...

This paper presents and compares some topologies based on a single-stage for electronic ballast. These topologies have been presented and studied in several papers. The integration of DC-to-DC converters and half-bridge resonant inverters is implemented in all topologies presented. DC-to-DC converters are used to provide a high input power factor,...

In this paper the design and implementation of an electronic ballast for UV lamps using a very low cost microcontroller (μC) is presented. The μC is used to optimize the lamp ignition and supply, allowing the control and regulation of lamp power. Also, protection features such as overcurrent, undervoltage and overtemperature are included using the...

A novel single-stage high-power-factor electronic ballast obtained from the integration of a forward DC-to-DC converter and a half-bridge resonant inverter is evaluated in this paper. The forward converter is operated in discontinuous conduction mode and constant frequency providing an input power factor high enough to satisfy present standard requ...

In this paper a low-cost high-frequency power supply for ozone generation is presented. Two important issues are addressed in this work: firstly, the ozone reactor is tested at high frequency and a new model of this type of load is proposed; secondly, a simple power supply stage is presented and analyzed, obtaining some important characteristics. F...

In this paper a new solution to implement and control a low-cost single-stage electronic ballast based on the integration of a buck-boost power factor correction stage and a half bridge resonant inverter is presented The control signals are obtained using the resonant current by means of a saturable transformer. Core saturation is used to control t...

In this paper a novel topology to supply MH lamps using sinusoidal waveform with superposed third harmonic is proposed. By employing this technique, the lamp is supplied with an approximated square waveform, but reducing the harmonic content and therefore EMI and RFI. The proposed topology is analyzed and designed for a 35 W MH lamp with ceramic di...

In the literature, several low-signal dynamic models for fluorescent lamps have been presented. These models can be used to analyze the lamp-ballast interaction in high frequency electronic ballasts. However, the small signal characteristics of HID lamps differ from those of fluorescent lamps, so the models described in previous literature cannot b...

In this paper, a low cost electronic ballast with power factor correction for 250 W high pressure sodium vapour lamps is presented. The electronic ballast is based on a two-stage scheme. The first stage realises the power factor correction by using a CC/CC buck converter operating in discontinuous conduction mode (DCM) and constant duty cycle meeti...