中国电气工程学报（英文） ›› 2022, Vol. 8 ›› Issue (3): 76-89.doi: 10.23919/CJEE.2022.000027

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  • 收稿日期:2022-01-21 修回日期:2022-03-28 接受日期:2022-04-11 出版日期:2022-09-25 发布日期:2022-10-21

Precise Electro-thermal Power Loss Model of a Three-level ANPC Inverter with Hybrid Si/SiC Switches

Dereje Woldegiorgis*, H. Alan Mantooth   

  1. Department of Electrical Engineering, University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, AR 72701, USA
  • Received:2022-01-21 Revised:2022-03-28 Accepted:2022-04-11 Online:2022-09-25 Published:2022-10-21
  • Contact: * E-mail: dlwoldeg@uark.edu
  • About author:Dereje Woldegiorgis (S’18) received BSc. degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Arba Minch University, Ethiopia in 2009 and an Erasmus Mundus joint M.Sc. degree from University of Nottingham, UK, University of Oviedo, Spain and Polytechnic Institute of Coimbra, Portugal in 2014. He is currently working towards his Ph.D. degree at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, AR, USA and doing summer internship as a Power Applications Engineer at Wolfspeed, Fayetteville, AR, USA. He was a recipient of the Outstanding Presentation Award for the 2021 IEEE Applied Power Electronics Conference (APEC). His research interests include modulation and control of power electronic converters, multilevel converter topologies, and renewable energy integrations and embedded system programming.
    H. Alan Mantooth (S’83-M’90-SM’97-F’09) received the B.S. and M.S. degrees in Electrical Engineering from the University of Arkansas in 1985 and 1986, respectively, and the Ph.D. degree from the Georgia Institute of Technology in 1990. He then joined Analogy, a startup company in Oregon, where he focused on semiconductor device modeling and the research and development of modeling tools and techniques. In 1998, he joined the Faculty of the Department of Electrical Engineering at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, where he currently holds the rank of Distinguished Professor. His research interests now include analog and mixed-signal IC design & CAD, semiconductor device modeling, power electronics, and power electronic packaging. Dr. Mantooth helped establish the National Center for Reliable Electric Power Transmission (NCREPT) at the UA in 2005. Professor Mantooth serves as the Executive Director for NCREPT as well as two of its centers of excellence: the NSF Industry/University Cooperative Research Center on Grid-connected Advanced Power Electronic Systems (GRAPES) and the Cybersecurity Center on Secure, Evolvable Energy Delivery Systems (SEEDS) funded by the U.S. Department of Energy. In 2015, he also helped to establish the UA’s first NSF Engineering Research Center entitled Power Optimization for Electro-Thermal Systems (POETS) that focuses on high power density systems for transportation applications. Dr. Mantooth holds the 21st Century Research Leadership Chair in Engineering. He serves as Immediate Past-President for the IEEE Power Electronics Society in 2019-2020. Dr. Mantooth is a Fellow of IEEE, a member of Tau Beta Pi and Eta Kappa Nu, and registered professional engineer in Arkansas.

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Abstract: Hybrid Si/SiC switches constituting a parallel connection of a lower current rated SiC MOSFET and a higher current rated Si IGBT are becoming very attractive solution for designing high frequency and high-power density power electronic converters. Due to the complementary nature of Si IGBT devices (smaller inverter cost and smaller conduction loss) and SiC devices (smaller switching loss and higher junction temperature capability), these novel switch device configurations enable a good tradeoff between cost and efficiency for high power converter applications. One such recent application of hybrid Si/SiC switches for efficiency-cost optimization is an Si/SiC hybrid switch based ANPC inverter proposed in Ref. [30]. In Ref. [30] the topology structure, modulation strategy and the efficiency-cost benefits of the proposed ANPC inverter is presented. In this paper a precise electro-thermal power loss model for this ANPC inverter topology will be presented based on the modulation strategy of the inverter and the operating characteristics of the Si/SiC hybrid switches. The power loss model development takes into account how the current sharing between the two internal devices of the Si/SiC hybrid switches and their corresponding gate control method affects their power loss. A brief introduction to the topology structure and operation principle of the Si/SiC based ANPC inverter is first highlighted to provide context for readers and then a detailed description of the proposed electro-thermal power loss model is presented. The precision of the electro-thermal power loss model introduced in this paper is then validated using experimentally measured energy loss, device temperature and inverter efficiency data.

Key words: Cost reduction, power loss model, efficiency improvement, ANPC inverter