RECOM and Power Control Systems Srl – a Perfect Marriage

RECOM and Power Control Systems Srl – a Perfect Marriage Blog Post Image
In April 2019, leading power conversion company RECOM acquired Power Control Systems Srl (PCS), adding specialist skills in the custom design of high reliability power products to the RECOM portfolio.

With more than 40 years of experience, PCS has formed long term relationships with demanding Tier-1 customers operating in the railway, medical, transportation, defense and industrial markets with economical and proven ‘platform’ power conversion solutions, with all necessary certifications.

A major PCS product group is compact, high power DC or AC input converters, single or three-phase, rated up to 20kW, with customer-specified features such as n+1 operation for redundancy or a digital interface for control and monitoring. Products include uni- or bidirectional battery chargers with intelligent control, for optimum performance over time, temperature and load. Balancing units are also offered, ensuring maximum lifetime and availability of series/parallel arrangements of batteries by actively controlling individual charge and discharge rates in active use and testing.

PCS has long experience of DC input inverter designs up to 5kW, with single or multi-phase ‘pure sine wave’ digitally-controlled, fully protected and isolated outputs. DC inputs range from 12V to 800V, compatible with EV requirements. The high efficiency designs are typically in 19” rack, open frame or chassis-mount formats, to customer specifications.

Power factor correction is a mandatory requirement in high power AC input converters and PCS has designed modular ‘PFC front ends’ from 200W to 4kW, single and three-phase. Products typically include comprehensive measurement and readout of DC output and input phase voltage and current, via a digital interface. Custom mechanical arrangements are available.

Bidirectional power supplies are increasingly used in energy recovery and balancing applications such as when EVs are used as intermediate storage in ‘Vehicle to Grid’ (V2G) systems. PCS has various platform solutions including a 10kW design using a high-efficiency topology, latest wide band-gap semiconductors and with digital monitoring and control.

A particular speciality of PCS is power conversion solutions for critical applications and ruggedized vehicles. Typically used in marine, avionic and automotive applications, PCS products use latest technologies for high power density while meeting extreme shock and vibration specifications and EMC compliance levels. DC/DC, AC/DC and DC/AC converters have all been supplied, operating reliably in environments that include temperature extremes, high humidity and corrosive atmosphere.