Power supply for a tethered drone

roineust said:

What do you think of the Meanwell SE-1500-15?

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We've just determined the drone factually needs somewhere between 140 - 160A just to stay in the air.
Why look at a 100A PSU??

roineust said:

For the next several months if not more than that, I'll be using only a 3 meters length cable.

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If you go down the "high current low voltage" ground based supply route, you can never use long cables as the weight of them is ridiculous.

roineust said:

Someone told me that there might be a problem where if i lower the throttle of the drone motors, a lot of current will go back into the power supply and ruin it

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You can get around that by having an onboard battery - but that makes the voltage control far more critical.
The other method is an additional shunt regulator to clamp the voltage just above the PSU setting.


PFC is power factor correction, it affects the input power efficiency & not the load side ratings or capabilities.

roineust said:

Currently and for months ahead, i will use only 3 meters cable

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Hardly worth using a drone for that height. Couldn't you simply fit the drone's payload to the top of a pole?

If I had to find a solution to this, with no alternate approaches re. the drone size & capacity etc., I'd find a PSU with something above the maximum rating needed (or two or more that are designed for load sharing) and split them at the DC bus after the rectifiers and smoothing.

Keep the rectifier/cap part on the ground and the converter part in the drone, with some extra HF caps at the converter input, and run the system at near its maximum AC input voltage to keep the DC bus voltage well up, 300 - 500V or so.

That means the link cables are only carrying somewhere roughly around 8A - 13A at 4KW converter input (200A 20V out, less inefficiencies).
Quite a bit of weight in the drone, but I'm pretty sure a fraction of the weight of long 200A tether cables!

However it is a lethally dangerous setup with the high voltage, high current DC link and it's not something for a beginner to consider, or suitable for use outside a restricted area.

So, why exactly would you want to tether the drone and what is its application intent?

This is the drone that I'm trying to move to a tether and power supply, for now only of length up to 3 meters:

I get it!
I think?

The idea is to place a printer in to position on a (vertical) wall without having to build a physical support structure.

JimB

Hi R,
I'm not sure if you have a solution yet, but in power transfer, it is usually best to use AC and raise the voltage, which means thinner wires and transformers, but I wonder if this may solve it for you?
C

roineust said:

The drone including batteries weighs in the order of 5kg.

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You don't need 200A to lift 5 kg. Your drone weighs more than a vehicle starter!

If you used two drones in sink with each other. One needing the cable and another smaller drone holding some cable?

Is there a link to this drone?

Guys, this is a nine month old thread.
The OP has not been here since November last year.

JimB

Something strange happened. Thought it was new and then after I commented everything changed.