San Diego-based AMETEK Programmable Power has found booming interest in its hand-built programmable power supply products, as car companies and suppliers seek to test EVs and batteries to meet demand for improved electric vehicles.

Senior product manager Jeff Brakley took a few minutes at The Battery Show to point out the features of AMETEK’s two programmable power supply products to clarify their differences. The massive cabinet-sized i-BEAM (Intelligent-Bidirectional Energy AMplified) supports loads as high as 650 kilowatts and can be paired into a 1.3-megawatt system.

The compact, rack-mounted Mi-BEAM (Modular Intelligent-Bidirectional Energy AMplified) Series is the company’s newest addition to its high-power testing product line, offering support for power levels ranging between 12 and 37 kW, filling in the space beneath the i-BEAM series, which starts at 35kW.

Their applications include:

• Battery simulation

• Battery testing (charge/discharge)

• Electric powertrain testing

• Fuel cell testing

• Solar inverter testing

The i-BEAM supports bidirectional voltage as high as 1,000 volts, with parallel systems able to handle 2,000 volts, making it suitable for testing future very-high-voltage EV powertrain systems. It can both test batteries, simulating EV drivetrain loads, and test drivetrains, simulating a battery providing power to the car’s inverter.

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Because the i-BEAM’s multiple channels share an internal DC bus, it can move power around among its channels rather than drawing more power from the grid. “On a multi-channel product, you can source on one channel, sync on another channel, and that power is regenerated inside the system before it goes back to the grid,” said Brakley. “You get additional cost savings and reductions in heat.”

The small 4U rack-mounted Mi-BEAM, which Brakley terms “a little brother” product, has similar capabilities in a smaller, more flexible package. It also works with voltages between 600 and 2,000 volts, and you can also stack as many as 32 Mi-BEAMs in parallel to maximize system power at 1.2 MW.

The cabinet-style i-BEAM requires more space and infrastructure to support it. AMETEK PROGRAMMABLE POWER

But in lesser configurations, the Mi-BEAM costs much less, takes less space, and has reduced infrastructure requirements compared to i-BEAM. The Mi-BEAM features six modes of operation: bi-directional, source, electronic load, battery simulation, battery test, and PUE mode.

Both products have front touchscreen interfaces for direct control or can communicate through a local area network, USB, RS-232, IEEE-488, or EtherCAT connections.