Abstract
This paper focuses on the investigation and implementation of a high-performance power conversion system to reduce the overvoltage phenomenon in variable speed electric drive applications. Particularly, the pros and cons of using Silicon Carbide power MOSFETs in the power converter when a long power cable is employed in electric motor drive systems has been addressed. The three-phase two level inverter with the addition of snubber circuits that consist of capacitors and diodes has been investigated, designed and tested in order to mitigate the overvoltage problems without sacrificing the conversion efficiency. Given that the snubber circuit added to the switches can increase losses, an additional circuit is used to recover the energy from the snubber circuit. The proposed analysis has been then validated through an experimental campaign performed on the converter prototype. The experimental results show that the proposed converter can reduce the overvoltage at the electric motor terminals with excellent conversion efficiency compared to the classical solution like the three-phase two level inverter.
Highlights
Energies 2021, 14, 1690. https://Nowadays, thanks to continuous improvement of power electronics technologies, Wide-Band-Gap (WBG) switching devices are reaching a satisfactory level of maturity and their performance and capabilities are very useful and promising for very high efficiency applications [1,2]
Silicon Carbide (SiC) power semiconductors present higher voltage-blocking capability and lower on-state resistance compared to silicon based power semiconductors, as well as several benefits related to thermal management, so they are perfect for high temperature applications [4,5,6]
The benefits of using SiC Metal-Oxide-Semiconductor Field-effect Transistors (MOSFETs) in the motor drive applications have been disThe benefits of using SiC MOSFETs in the motor drive applications have been discussed in the first part of this paper
Summary
Energies 2021, 14, 1690. https://Nowadays, thanks to continuous improvement of power electronics technologies, Wide-Band-Gap (WBG) switching devices are reaching a satisfactory level of maturity and their performance and capabilities are very useful and promising for very high efficiency applications [1,2]. Keeping constant the power losses, it is possible to increase the switching frequency leading to a reduction of volume and weight of passive energy-storage components. For this reason, being able to integrate components like inductors and capacitors, it is possible to maximize the power density of the power conversion system. In some cases, the high-power density and the high efficiency can be achieved using sophisticated power conversion topologies, avoiding SiC power semiconductors [7,8,9,10] In these cases, the complexity of the conversion system control strategy increases, due to the large number of power devices [11,12].
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