Research Journal: Phase 3 – Putting the Power Stage to the Test

Today the Adaptive Energy Recovery Initiative moved into its next stage: testing what happens when the prototype begins repeatedly pulsing the electromagnetic power circuit.

• Phase 2 established that the individual components could operate together.

• Phase 3 was about finding out whether that system could remain stable once the MOSFET began repeatedly switching current through the inductor.

Before testing could begin, however, part of the power stage had to be rebuilt.

With no external power connected, both analog sensing channels settled at zero. When the 9V supply was connected, the current-sensing channel remained at zero while the voltage-monitoring channel produced a stable reading corresponding to approximately 8.7V at the power bus.

That gave the project a clean baseline for the first controlled pulse tests.

The MOSFET was then programmed to generate very short 20-microsecond pulses through the 470 µH inductor. The test began conservatively at approximately one pulse per second.

After more than 50 consecutive pulses, the power bus remained stable. The battery, MOSFET, inductor, and current-sense resistor all remained cool, and the measurement system continued operating normally.

The next question was whether the energy released when the magnetic field in the inductor collapsed could be observed returning through the recovery path.

Initial measurements compared the power-bus voltage immediately before and after each pulse. One test measured 8.731V before the pulse and 8.732V afterward. A second experiment accumulated 50 pulses and again showed essentially no measurable change.

That does not mean no energy is moving through the recovery path. It means the difference is currently smaller than this measurement setup can reliably resolve.

And that distinction matters.

The switching event occurs on a microsecond timescale, while the Nano's analog measurement system is better suited to slower signals. Trying to interpret changes of only a few millivolts as recovered energy would give the experiment more precision than the instrumentation actually provides.

Rather than force a conclusion from the data, direct measurement of the current and recovery transient will be deferred until higher-speed instrumentation, such as an oscilloscope, is available.

Phase 3 still produced an important result.

The prototype can now repeatedly generate controlled electromagnetic pulses while maintaining a stable power bus and normal thermal behavior. The voltage-sensing system is working, the switching stage is operating consistently, and the recovery path is ready for more precise measurement.

It is learning exactly what happens to the energy during each pulse, measuring how much can be recovered, and eventually using that information to influence how the system controls the next one.

That is where the project begins moving toward state-aware energy recovery.