John Errington's tutorial on Power Supply Design

High voltage

All the circuits previously described can easily be modified to be used with high voltages (say 50V
- 400V)

Look at the diagram below.

Introduction
Simplified diagram for high voltage supply
Transformer
and rectifier All the components
Smoothing below the red line are
operating at low
Ripple Current voltages -
in the region of 0 - 15V.
Load
regulation The only components
where high voltages are
Design
present are the
Example 1
transistors TR1 and
TR2, the capacitor C1,
Voltage and the top resistor in
Regulation the divider chain.

Voltage Although the regulator

References (or resistor) used to
provide current to the base of TR1 is at a high positive voltage, it is not connected to ground, so
Voltage
the voltage across it is not a concern.
Regulation
Simple cct
Choice of HV components
Voltage
Regulation and These should be chosen to withstand the voltages (and currents) that could arise. So
analysis TR1, C1, R2 and TR2 should be rated higher then the maximum voltage from the
unregulated supply.
Voltage
Regulation WHY?
precision
circuit Suppose you need a supply to provide 300V at 0.1A, and the unregulated supply provides 320V
at 0.1A. At first sight you say - "we need TR1 with Vceo max> 320 - 300 = 20V." However if the
Voltage
load is capacitive, at switch on Vout = 0V, and Vceo = 320V.
Regulation
Conclusion Similarly, all components should be insulated to withstand these voltages. This is a particular
concern when mounting the transistors on a heat sink, especially if the heat sink is earthed.

Current With high voltage supplies its important to check the power ratings of the components -see
sources below.

Constant Remaining components

current
The remining components all operate from a low voltage supply of around 15V - 24V. Its
inefficient to provide this from the unregulated HV supply, so a separate low voltage unregulated
Feedback supply will be needed. This is often sourced from a separate secondary winding on the
High voltages transformer.

Example design
Rules of
This example shows a supply designe
thumb
its temperature coefficient of
+0.03%/C balances the
-0.028%/C tpc of the transistor
Vbe.
 The base voltage is set to
8.2+0.7 = 8.9V which gives an
output voltage of Vout = 8.9 *
(47+1.8) / 1.8
Vout = 246V
This can be adjusted if necessary
by trimming the 1k8 resistor with
a higher value (around 220k) in
parallel.

Power ratings

The power dissipation should be checked as HV supplies can cause higher powers to arise. For
example consider the 47k resistor in this circuit.

V = 240V I = 5mA Pt = 1.2 watts. A 2W resistor (or better) is required so it runs cool.

The MJE340 is passing 9mA and has 250V across it. Pt = 2.4W

(its rated at 300V & 20W but will still need a small heat sink.)