in Fig. 6. By changing the firing angle β, the
fundamental value of the current going
through the resistor-thyristor circuit can be
controlled. When β = 0°, full current passes
through the resistor-thyristor circuit, thus
giving maximum load. When β = 180°, current
through the resistor-thyristor circuit is zero.
For values of β in between 0° and 180°, current
through the ballast load varies between its
maximum and zero, thus acting as a variable
resistor. However, as β is increased, the
displacement factor of the resistor-thyristor
circuit increases, thus absorbing reactive
power. Under this condition, the resistorthyristor
circuit draws reactive current from
the excitation capacitors, thus reducing the
effective capacitance available to supply
magnetisation current to the induction
generator. This will cause a slight reduction in
the generated voltage.
Another circuit, which does not absorb
displacement current, uses a number of
resistors with a switched thyristor scheme. The
circuit is shown in Fig. 7. In this circuit, the
back-to-back thyristor pair operates either as a
closed or open switch. Hence the load may be
varied by controlling the number of parallel
resistor-thyristor circuits, which are ‘on’.
Therefore, the variation of the load is in steps
and smooth variation is not possible. In order
to get a better resolution from the circuit in
Fig. 7, resistors can be selected in binary
weighted form. If R1 = R, R2 = 2R and R3 = 4R
then the load can be varied from 0 to 7R, in
steps of R.
As indicated above, the thyristor-based
circuits have some drawbacks. A circuit that
exhibits smoothly varying ballast load with
unity power factor operation is shown in Fig.
8. In this circuit, the electronic switch is
operated at a high frequency, thus chopping the
rectified AC voltage. The effective resistance of
the ballast load can be changed by varying the
duty ratio of the switch. Fig. 9 shows the
voltage across the ballast load and the AC side
current when the consumer load is only 50%
of the rated load of the machine. As can be
seen from Fig. 9, due to the inductance of
the generator, the current drawn from the
generator is nearly sinusoidal with a superimposed
high-frequency ripple component.
The electronic switch may be a transistor, a
MOSFET or an IGBT. Most of the latest circuits
employ IGBTs. However, when employing
IGBTs, extra care must be taken against spikes
generated during the switching transients as