Abstract
In this paper, the performance of an active neutral point clamped (ANPC) inverter is evaluated, which is developed utilizing both silicon (Si) and gallium trioxide (Ga2O3) devices. The hybridization of semiconductor devices is performed since the production volume and fabrication of ultra-wide bandgap (UWBG) semiconductors are still in the early-stage, and they are highly expensive. In the proposed ANPC topology, the Si devices are operated at a low switching frequency, while the Ga2O3 switches are operated at a higher switching frequency. The proposed ANPC mitigates the fault current in the switching devices which are prevalent in conventional ANPCs. The proposed ANPC is developed by applying a specified modulation technique and an intelligent switching arrangement, which has further improved its performance by optimizing the loss distribution among the Si/Ga2O3 devices and thus effectively increases the overall efficiency of the inverter. It profoundly reduces the common mode current stress on the switches and thus generates a lower common-mode voltage on the output. It can also operate at a broad range of power factors. The paper extensively analyzed the switching performance of UWBG semiconductor (Ga2O3) devices using double pulse testing (DPT) and proper simulation results. The proposed inverter reduced the fault current to 52 A and achieved a maximum efficiency of 99.1%.
Highlights
Considering the issues stated above, this study proposes a hybrid active neutral point clamped (ANPC) inverter that utilizes both conventional Si and Ga2 O3 devices
Incorporating ultra-wide bandgap (UWBG) semiconductors to utilize their various advantages such as reduced size, minimized switching transient overshoots, reduced current and voltage stress, high-frequency switching, and efficiency; Hybridization with conventional Si switches to prevent high leakage current and high-frequency switching losses; The split-output structure is adopted for the ANPC inverter to prevent shoot-through current fault, reduce electromagnetic interference (EMI) on the output, and enable it to operate under different ranges of power factors; Validating the performance enhancement by comparing with conventional ANPC in terms of power losses, efficiency, fault current, and EMI
This validates the predominance of the UWBG device as well as the hybridization that has been utilized in this article
Summary
It should be noted that in addition to successfully protecting the shoot-through fault, reduced leakage current and the eradication of CMV transitions that are high frequency in nature, can be achieved through this inverter Even though this configuration removes most of the inconveniences, it operates in a unity power factor region. Incorporating UWBG semiconductors to utilize their various advantages such as reduced size, minimized switching transient overshoots, reduced current and voltage stress, high-frequency switching, and efficiency; Hybridization with conventional Si switches to prevent high leakage current and high-frequency switching losses; The split-output structure is adopted for the ANPC inverter to prevent shoot-through current fault, reduce electromagnetic interference (EMI) on the output, and enable it to operate under different ranges of power factors; Validating the performance enhancement by comparing with conventional ANPC in terms of power losses, efficiency, fault current, and EMI.
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