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Enhancing power density and efficiency of variable speed drives with 1200 V SiC T-MOSFET

More than 50 % of the electric energy generation in Europe is consumed by industrial motors. Variable speed drives (VSD) enable considerable power savings compared to fixed speed operation with mechanical throttling. On the other hand the application of an inverter creates initial investment costs, space requirements and cooling efforts compared to a direct connection of the motor to the grid. As silicon based power semiconductors are expected to saturate in terms of electrical performance and power density, power switches based on wideband gap materials such as silicon carbide (SiC) are becoming the focus of interest for several applications to enhance power density and efficiency. In this paper the usage of the novel CoolSiC™ Trench-MOSFET (T-MOSFET) was investigated and discussed for a 22 kW variable speed drive. The switching transistor voltage slope was limited to 5 kV/µs in order to use standard motors as described in.

• 1.27 MB
• 24/05/2017