The New Electronic Load

Electronic load can save less energy and is smaller in size and more efficient than resistance load. Therefore, electronic load is generally used to power, communication, automobile, accumulator and so on. Electronic load is becoming increasingly the hotspot. The electronic load includes of digital controller, detection and driver circuit and communication circuit. Digital controller controls the on and off-time of the MOS transistors which expend energy of the power supply. It is realized that the parameter of the power be controlled steadily.The system scheme of direct current electronic load is analyzed, especially the hardware and software realization is discussed particularly in the paper, and a reasonable solution scheme is presented. For the sake of the control and functional expansion, ATmega16, AVR microcontroller produced by ATMEL Corporation, is used as the core controller of the whole control circuit. Control circuit includes of detection circuit, keyboard circuit, display circuit communication circuit and driver circuit. Through the coordination of the software and hardware, the design can be realized. The microcontroller output will be PWM waveforms with different duty cycle. According to control the on and off-time of the MOS transistors, the current and voltage of FET can be regulated to achieve a variety of working mode.Debugging results of software and hardware show that this design can supply 100W constant current & constant voltage. If further research work should be done, it transforms the DC power into the AC power and then sends it into utility power system, in this way, the recycling of power can be realized.