CAS - CERN Accelerator School : Specialised CAS Course on Power Converters: Warrington, UK 12 - 18 May 2004

These proceedings contain the lectures given at the eighteenth specialized course organized by the CERN Accelerator School (CAS), the topic being ‘Power Converters for Particle Accelerators’. The course was held in Warrington, UK, from 12 to 18 May 2004. A similar course took place in Montreux, Switzerland in 1990, with proceedings published as CERN 90-07. After an interval of fourteen years, the aim of this course was to present a review of the actual state of the art and highlight the latest developments in the field. The course started with a basic recapitulation on accelerators, the required performance for the power converters, and the classification of converter topologies. Following this introductory section, more detailed aspects of active and passive components, converter topology analysis and simulations were presented. Based on these building blocks, the main power converter topologies were covered such as thyristor rectifiers, 1-quadrant and 4-quadrant switched-mode power converters. The important problem of the high precision required for power converters in particle accelerators was exposed by lectures on regulation theory, high-precision measurements, ADC–DAC and general controls. In parallel to this, practical aspects were also considered and lectures on protection, interlock diagnostics, EMC and electrical networks were presented. The programme was completed with seminars and interactive discussions related to future challenges to be met in the field of power converters.