Open-circuit shunt-regulated high-voltage circuit

Claim 1

A High-Voltage Circuit with Open Circuit Shunt Regulation comprising: a ferroresonant transformer including a high-reactance transformer having a low voltage primary winding for connection to a source of AC electrical energy, and a high-voltage secondary winding for producing a high-voltage output; and a capacitance connected across the high-voltage secondary winding; a low-voltage secondary control winding magnetically coupled with the high-voltage secondary winding of the high-reactance transformer; and control means associated with the secondary control winding for regulating the high-voltage output of the ferroresonant transformer, the control means including: means for rectifying the output voltage produced by the control winding; means for controlling current flow through the control winding, said current controlling means being connected across the rectified output of the control winding thereby to regulate the output voltage thereof; means for clamping peak control winding output voltage for producing a signal to effect operation of the current controlling means; means for sampling and averaging the clamped control winding output voltage; and means for comparing the averaged sampled control winding output voltage with a reference voltage and for producing a signal to effect operation of the current controlling means when the averaged sampled output voltage is greater than the reference voltage; whereby the high-voltage output tracks the control winding output voltage.