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DIY electronic load

DESCRIPTION

My name is Elmar Peters and I'm from the Netherlands where i study power electronics at TU delft.

I design power converters and for testing these power converters an electronic load is required. An electronic load is the opposite from what a power supply is. Where a power supply delivers an electronic power with a certain voltage and current, an electronic load sinks an electronic power. An electronic load can be configured to draw a constant current, power, act as a constant resistance or keep the voltage across the terminals constant.
load complete.PNG

TECHNICAL DETAILS

The load I designed dissipates power is a single mosfet in a to-247 package. This mosfet is attached to a large CPU heatsink mounted on an extruded aluminium housing. A maximum of 300W can be dissipated where the current and voltage are limited to 15A and 300V.

The front panel of the load is made out of a PCB. The front of this PCB gives a nice user interface, the back of this PCB is used to mount all components required for controlling the load. Incoming voltage and current is measured and used to control the dissipating mosfet.

The user interface consists of a rotary switch that can be used to select different modes and configure the limits for the current and voltage. All setpoints and measurements are shown on an OLED display.

The load also has a wifi module for connection to a PC. This is great for configuring the load in automated test setups.