“Power electronics is something that nobody wants to do but everybody needs”

Fundamentally power electronics is the application of electronic circuits in order to control and convert electrical power. In the case of the Cubesat project the need arises from the fact that on-board loads require stable DC supplies while energy is stored in batteries and harvested by solar panels (both which have voltage levels that vary).

Overall the task of the EPS Subteam is to design an electrical system which is able to:

• Harvest energy from the solar panels and store it in a battery
• Ensure that the battery bank is in a good
• Use the stored energy to provide stable voltage rails for all on-board
• Offer telemetry data in regards to how power is distributed to different
• Isolate faults such that if one subsystem fails it does not compromise the whole

The main challenges that such a system encounters are not within the power converters themselves, as they are usually contained entirely in an integrated circuit in the case of monolithic converters, but rather in creating a reliable enough design. Each power rail needs to be isolated and the system needs to handle a large number of failure modes, some in which the on board computer is not operational and thus there is no communication channel with the ground segment.

Within Aster we are developing an EPS system from the ground up, thus the work within the sub-team can be split as follows: