ACCESSORIES
Facilitating tools for experimental research
Imperix offers a wide range of accessories for its control and power products
Because modular power electronic systems require large flexibility when building laboratory-scale systems, imperix offers various accessories that are directly plug-&-play with the B-Box RCP and power modules.
Our accessories support building rapidly and easily downscaled converter prototypes or implementing hardware-in-the-loop simulation systems.
Rack-mountable enclosures
Inductors and filters
HIL interfaces
Plug-&-play sensors
Electrotechnical equipment
Cables
19” cabinets
Self-powered laboratory sensors
Plug-&-Play sensors
Self-powered from the digital controller
Our voltage and current sensors are designed to be very easy to use along with our digital controller, the B-Box RCP. Thanks to the use of RJ45 cables, one single cable is enough to provide power supplies to the sensors, as well as to retrieve their measurements.
Besides, as RJ45 cables provide well-shielded twisted signal pairs, the carried analog signals are guaranteed to suffer minimal interference.
Easily mountable on 35mm DIN rails
Imperix laboratory sensors are designed to be handy. Before all other aspects, they aim to be very quick to implement in all sorts of laboratory-scale power systems.
Sensors provide screw-less connection terminals and can be instantly inserted on standard 35mm DIN rails. This way, with only a few units, engineers can easily reuse the same sensors across different projects.
| your price |
Imperix DIN-mountable voltage sensors are usable for both DC and AC measurements.
- Range
±800V (AC/DC) - Sensitivity 2.46mV/V
- Bandwith 100kHz
| your price |
Imperix DIN-mountable current sensors are usable for both DC and AC measurements.
- Range
±50A (AC/DC) - Sensitivity 99mV/A
- Bandwith 200kHz
Example of 800V voltage sensors at the rear side of a 19” cabinet.
Electro-mechanical equipment
Grid connection panels
When experimentation with grid-connected systems is desired, a few electromechanical devices are essential in order to support:
- System pre-charge and DC bus loading
- Grid synchronization before connection
- Electrical safety
Imperix offers standards grid connection panels, suitable for 110VAC or 230VAC operation, which can be easily customized upon customer requirements. By standard, a panel contains:
- 1x 16A (type C) circuit breaker (3-phase)
- 1x Controllable relay (3-phase)
- 3x Precharge resistors (47ohm), with 1x bypass relay
- 2x Auxiliary solid-state relays
- 1x VHDCI adapter and cable
Because all research projects are different, converter hardware implementations are never exactly the same.
Imperix offers standard system configurations, which can be ordered without customization, or modified upon specific project requirements. In both cases, we can deliver the systems pre-wired, so that they be powered up right away after delivery.
As such, in many cases, we will recommend the use of various additional accessories, such as mounting rails, passive filters, connection terminals, special sensors, etc, which will be arranged as a function of the converter topology and its application.
Standard off-the-shelf accessories
AUXILIARY CABLES
Users are always free to procure cables and other accessories through their usual suppliers. Nevertheless, when preferable, imperix may also provide all the necessary cables to operate our equipment. Upon request, other cable lengths or colors may also be available.
 | your price |
Used as isolated gate-drive interfaces, fiberoptic cables can be used to connect the B-Box RCP controller to power modules.
The standard length is 2m.
 | your price |
These cables are ideal to connect the analog outputs of the B-Box RCP to any external monitoring device such as an oscilloscope.
The standard length is 1m.
 | your price |
RJ45 cables are used to connect the current and voltage sensors – inside the power modules or external ones – to the B-Box RCP.
The standard length is 2m.
 | your price |
SFP cables are used to connect together multiple B-Box RCP or B-Board PRO units in master-slave configurations.
The standard length is 1m.
Hardware-in-the-loop simulation
HIL/PHIL simulator interfaces
For the present and future owners of hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) or power hardware-in-the-loop (PHIL) simulation systems, imperix provides hardware interface boards that allow either:
- Using the B-Box RCP together with a HIL simulator. For this, the interface offers 16x optical inputs and 16x analog outputs
- Using a HIL simulator together with imperix power modules. For this, the interface offers 16x optical outputs and 16x analog inputs
This interface interconnects the B-Box RCP to a HIL simulator.
This approach, sometimes called Controller Hardware-in-the-Loop, allows any control implementation can be first tested on a simulated converter before it is applied to real hardware.
This interface allows controlling imperix modules from a HIL simulator.
It provides the necessary signal connections to easily wire the digital outputs of a HIL simulator to the command inputs of the power modules, and retrieve any useful measurement to its analog inputs.
| TYPE OF INTERFACE | OPAL-RT | PLEXIM | TYPHOON HIL | SPEEDGOAT |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Simulator interface (C-HIL configurations) | ||||
| Power interface (PHIL configurations) |
Basic accessories
Breakout adapter boards
Although most basic experimental setups can be implemented using exclusively optical fibers and RJ45 cables (for gate signals and analog inputs respectively), some additional I/O signals may be needed.
On the B-Box RCP, the VHDCI breakout board can be used to easily access:
- General-purpose I/Os (GPI/GPO).
- Incremental decoder inputs (DEC).
- High-speed user I/Os (directly from/to the FPGA, USR).
- Additional PWM outputs (PWM).
| your price |
The module provides easy access to the high-speed digital I/Os of the B-Box RCP. It is compatible with all 4 sockets (A,B,C and D) and comes with a 1m cable.
 | your price |
RJ45 INPUT ADAPTER
When probing the different signals of the RJ45 cable is needed, this simple adapter can turn out handy.