Medium Voltage Power Switch in Silicon Carbide—A Comparative Study

Abstract

This paper discusses various solutions of energy conversion in medium voltage using power switches in Silicon Carbide (SiC) technology. In particular, a comparative study is focused on four different variants of an inverter phase leg operating at 1.5 kV DC, which has not been presented in the literature yet. The first one is based on a standard two-level half-bridge built from a 3.3 kV SiC MOSFET power module rated at 450 A. Then, the two-level solution with series-connected devices inside 1.2 kV/450 A power modules is taken into account. Finally, a flying-capacitor phase leg also based on the same 1.2 kV devices is investigated in two different modes: a standard three-level operation and quasi-two-level mode with a significantly reduced capacitor. The presented study is founded on in-depth experiments: all four phase legs were designed, built, and tested in the laboratory. All versions were connected in a half-bridge configuration with an inductive load. Tests were conducted under identical conditions to test the overall performance and switching behavior for various gate resistances. In addition, different aspects are analyzed and compared in this paper, including parasitics, cooling performance, gate drivers and layout considerations, providing selection guidelines for power switches with SiC power devices in medium voltage power electronics applications.INDEX TERMS medium voltage, power converters, power electronics, power MOSFETs, silicon carbide.

A Generalized Phase-Shift PWM Extension for Improved Natural and Active Balancing of Flying Capacitor Multilevel Inverters

“…while carriers 6 and 1 correspond to adjacent "10" bits. All the potential carrier exchanges are reported in (6). However, the two carrier pairs in the same row are 180 o phase shifted and should not be swapped simultaneously; exchanging a second pair of the same line within the same fundamental period would cancel out the effect of the first pair, meaning that fewer unique ZSS will be generated.…”

“…The most demanding applications are found in the transportation sector, including electric and hybrid aircraft propulsion systems [1], [2] and electric vehicle charges [3]. Stationary applications, such as PV generators [4], power factor correction (PFC) systems [5] and various medium voltage applications [6] also benefit from more compact and lightweight converters, as this is translated to lower installation cost.…”

Mathematical Design and Analysis of Three-Phase Inverters: Different Wide Bandgap Semiconductor Technologies and DC-Link Capacitor Selection

“…It highlights the importance of considering modulation technique, deadtime value and their effects on various converter components, such as total losses. Several energy conversion solutions in medium voltage using 3.3 kV- [10], and 10 kV- [11] SiC MOSFET switches are discussed in references [10] and [11], respectively. The dynamic features of 1.2 kV SiC MOSFET switch are investigated in reference [12].…”