Patent ID: 9716456
Date: 2017-07-25
CPC Classifications: H02J,H02K,H02P

Claim:
1. A rotary electric machine comprising: a stator winding having an output end; a rotor including an excitation winding; a switch connected to the output end of the stator winding; a modulation signal generator configured to: a rectifying unit configured to alternately turn on and off the switch to rectify the voltage at the output end of the stator winding, thus generating a rectified voltage; and an excitation current supplying circuit communicably connected to the modulation signal generator via a communication line and configured to start a supply of an excitation current to the excitation winding of the rotor to induce a rotating magnetic field in the stator winding when the modulation signal output from the modulation signal generator is input thereto via the communication line, wherein: the modulation signal generator is configured to: output a first modulation signal that is the modulation signal, the first modulation signal having a duty factor and a signal variation range; monitor the output end of the stator winding; generate a second modulation signal when a result of the monitor represents one of: the voltage at the output end of the stator winding becoming equal to or higher than a predetermined value; and detection of a current flowing through the output end of the stator winding; and output the second modulation signal to the communication line; the second modulation signal being a pulse signal having a duty factor and a signal variation range, at least one of the duty factor and the signal variation range of the second modulation signal differing from a corresponding at least one of the duty factor and the signal variation range of the first modulation signal, and the excitation current supplying circuit is configured to: start the supply of the excitation current to the excitation winding of the rotor when instructed externally; and control the supply of the excitation current to the excitation winding of the rotor to stabilize the rectified voltage when the second modulation signal output from the modulation signal generator is input thereto, the stator winding includes multiphase stator windings, each of the multiphase stator windings having an output end; the switch includes a plurality of switches connected to the respective multiphase stator windings; the modulation signal generator includes a plurality of modulation signal generators provided for the respective multiphase stator windings; the plurality of modulation signal generators and the excitation current supplying circuit are communicably connected to each other via the communication line; and only one of the plurality of modulation signal generators is configured to generate the first and second modulation signals, and output the first and second modulation signal to the communication line.