Powering Power Electronic Simulations using PSIM

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User reviews
There are several factors that make PSIM the preferred choice for power circuit simulation, namely, user interface, speed and robustness. Testimonials written on the PSIM website suggest that designers consider PSIM as a flexible, intuitive, easy-to-use and cost-effective software tool, optimally suited for power electronics simulations.

“Simulation is very fast, which allows exploring alternative design approaches and component sensitivities without spending a lot of time on waiting for results. The outstanding processing speed of PSIM is also very useful in cases when both line-frequency and high-frequency components are present, for example, power factor correctors or inverters,” says Dr Richard Redl, consultant, ELFI S.A., Farvagny-le-Petit, Switzerland.

“The fact that PSIM separates power and control has a major effect on reducing simulation time,” according to R. Beland, vice president R&D, emd Technologies Inc., Quebec, Canada. “We also use SPICE simulator in some cases. However, the simulation time with SPICE in our case is so long that SPICE simulation becomes unusable,” he adds.

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“The program has a comprehensive library of generic power electronics components, signal sources, control blocks and measurement functions. It is quick and easy to set up, simulate and can probe even a very complicated system,” adds Dr Richard.

“The ability to integrate machines into electronic simulation, along with the availability of multiple machine models, makes PSIM an exceptional tool for motor drive applications,” says T. Lesster, fellow, RCT Systems Inc., MD, the USA.

An ultimate simulation environment for power electronic applications

PSIM software is a very powerful environment that allows designers to simulate their designs with utmost accuracy. Actual test results are found to be closely matching with simulated results. This improves productivity of companies drastically and reduces the time to market.

Download latest version of the software: click here

The demo is limited to 34 elements in circuit size. Some functions, including sub-circuits and C blocks, Simcoder and Modcoupler are disabled. You can avail a full trial licence on request from PSIM support. If you are taking your first step into the field of power electronic simulations, the demo version should suffice. Give it a try!

The author is an electronics enthusiast from Kerala