Voltage Balancing Method for Series-Connection of 50 SiC MOSFETs
Conference: PCIM Europe 2024 - International Exhibition and Conference for Power Electronics, Intelligent Motion, Renewable Energy and Energy Management
06/11/2024 - 06/13/2024 at Nürnberg, Germany
doi:10.30420/566262196
Proceedings: PCIM Europe 2024
Pages: 8Language: englishTyp: PDF
Authors:
Philippe, Antoine; Ginot, Nicolas; Boisson, Guillaume Piquet; Descamps, Anne-Sophie; Nguyen, Van-Sang; Batard, Christophe
Abstract:
Silicon Carbide (SiC) MOSFETs above 3.3 kV are expensive and not yet commercially available. Partly because of this, medium voltage (MV) converters use multi-level architectures that are far more complex to design and maintain. In order to simplify the design of MV converters by using a two-level topology, this paper introduces a synthetic MV switch made up of 48 series-connected 1.2 kV SiC MOSFETs. As such series-connected switches suffer from dynamic voltage unbalancing issues; this paper discusses a new method for the voltage balancing of a series-connection of near 50 transistors, using a voltage clamping circuit and an associated command scheme for gate delay control.