Up until now, no suitably sophisticated hardware has been available that enables generators in commercial vehicles, agricultural and construction machinery as well as other vehicles with internal 24-V on-board electrical systems to be operated at maximum efficiency. To address this, EBV Elektronik collaborated with STMicroelectronics to develop the Epona generator regulator as part of the EBVchips line.
Designed for vehicles with 24-V on-board electrical systems, the component is also suitable for use in 12-V on-board electrical systems in passenger cars. Although a number of application-specific standard products (ASSPs) are already available for regulating generators, each individual ASSP is specifically adapted in line with the individual requirements of a single OEM. With Epona, however, suppliers now have a basic design for regulating generators and so are able to cover the requirements of all vehicle manufacturers - a first in the industry.
The basic idea behind Epona was to offer as many degrees of freedom as possible in order to enable a highly efficient system design on the one hand and to implement the necessary control algorithms on the other. Although it would theoretically have been possible to create a system like this as a highly efficient controller, the numerous different vehicle manufacturer specifications means that the control loop must be user-programmable to avoid the need to develop an individual ASSP for each solution.
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