New Agilent Advanced Power System: More on High-Power!

Last week, I announced two new families of high-power system DC power supplies from Agilent Technologies:

• N6900/N7900 Series 1- and 2-kW Advanced Power System (APS) DC Power Supplies
• N8900 Series 5-, 10-, and 15-kW Autoranging DC Power Supplies

Here is the press release on these two new families:

https://www.agilent.com/about/newsroom/presrel/2013/04sep-em13103.html

In my post last week, I concentrated on the N8900 Series of autoranging power supplies. Those are basic DC power supplies with outputs up to 15 kW (can be paralleled to 100 kW and more). Today, I am focusing on the N6900/N7900 Series of Advanced Power System DC Power Supplies. These power supplies really do live up to their “Advanced Power System” label. I’ve been working here on power products since 1980 and have supported several feature-rich product families in that time: most notable were our AC source products (6811B, 6812B, and 6813B) and more recently, our battery drain analysis source/measure units (N6705B with N6781A). The new N6900/N7900 Advanced Power System rivals those products for rich features and quite honestly, just like our marketing slogan says, they really should help you “overcome your toughest power test challenges”. Why? Read on…

First the basics:

• There are ten 1 kW models each in a 1U package
• There are fourteen 2 kW models each in a 2U package
• Rated output voltages range from 9 V to 160 V
• Rated output currents range from 12.5 A to 200 A
• Outputs can be paralleled up to 10 kW

Here is what these products look like:

Now for a few details. There are two performance levels:

• N6900 Series is designed for ATE applications where high performance is critical
• N7900 Series is designed for ATE applications where high-speed dynamic sourcing and measurement is needed

Both performance levels have advanced power features including:

   Sourcing

• Precision voltage and current programming (N6900 is 14-bit; N7900 is 16-bit)
• Programmable output resistance
• Current sinking up to 10% of rated current (up to 100% with added N7909A power dissipator)

   Measurement

• 18-bit voltage and current measurements
• Power measurements
• Amp-Hour and Watt-Hour measurements

The higher performance N7900 products add more features to the above:

    Sourcing

• Precision 16-bit voltage and current programming (N6900 is 14-bit)
• Output lists to quickly step through voltage or current levels
• Arbitrary waveform generation

    Measurement

• Low current measurement range
• Seamless ranging for dynamic current measurements
• Adjustable sample rate
• Measurement array readback
• External data logging

And even more capabilities:

• Extended current measurement range that measures 2.25 x higher than the rated current
• Sampling up to 200 kS/s
• Extensive triggering capability
• Extensive protection features such as open sense lead detect, over- and under-voltage and current, and over-temperature
• And my personal favorite: you can track power events by adding a black box recorder (N7908A). The N7908A Black Box Recorder is a user-installable option that performs continuous background logging of output voltage, current, power, and system status to its own dedicated mass storage device. Features of this option include:
• Automatic logging starts when the power supply is turned on
• Logs in a circular buffer of about 380 MB
• Select one record every 10 ms (24 hours of logging) or one record every 100 ms (10 days of logging).
• Each record saves the average, maximum, and minimum  values for voltage, current, and power in addition to power supply status bits and events
• Logged data is preserved after a power cycle. A time-stamped event is logged each time power is turned on.

The black box recorder is pretty cool, no? If you have a mission critical power application, this option is a must to keep track of any power related events that might affect your device under test.

One of my colleagues, Neil Forcier, posted about these products on his GPETE blog earlier this month. Here is a link to that post: https://gpete-neil.blogspot.com/2013/09/the-new-advanced-power-system-designed.html

For more detailed information, take a look at the datasheet: https://cp.literature.agilent.com/litweb/pdf/5991-2698EN.pdf

The datasheet contains some fantastic details about the products including 9 tests challenges that are directly addressed by these powerful products. In fact, you can read about each of the 9 test challenges here: www.agilent.com/find/TestChallenges

With all of these advanced features built into this family of products, I think you can now appreciate why we called it the Advanced Power System!