• The Transactions of the Korean Institute of Power Electronics
• /
• v.22 no.4
• /
• pp.345-352
• /
• 2017

In this paper, a non-dissipative snubber for reducing the switching losses in the step down converter is proposed. The conventional step down converter, e.g., buck converter, suffers from serious switching losses and consequentially heat generation because of its hard switching. Thus, it is unsuitable for high switching frequency operation. Reduction of the reactive components' size, such as an output inductor and capacitor, is difficult. The proposed snubber can slow down the increasing current slopes and switch voltage at turn-on and turn-off transients, thereby significantly reducing the switching loses. Additionally, the slowly increasing current during switch turn-on transition, can effectively solve the output rectifier diode reverse recovery problem. Therefore, the proposed non-dissipative snubber not only leads to the efficiency of converter operation at high switching frequency but also reduces the reactive components size in proportion to the switching frequency. To confirm the validity of the proposed circuit, theoretical analysis and experimental results from a 150 W, 1 MHz prototype are presented.

• Journal of Power Electronics
• /
• v.4 no.2
• /
• pp.77-86
• /
• 2004

This paper presents a novel three-phase power module bridge type auxiliary resonant AC link snubber for the three-phase voltage-fed sinwave soft switching PWM inverter operating under specific instantaneous space voltage vector modulation. The operating principle of this resonant snubber is described for current source load model during one switching period, along with its design approach based on the simulation data. The performance evaluations of space vector modulation three-phase sinewave soft switching inverter with a new three-phase active auxiliary resonant AC link snubber are discussed as compared with those of three-phase voltage source-fed sinewave hard switching PWM inverter with a standard space voltage vector modulation strategy. The power loss analysis and conventional efficiency estimation of three-phase soft switching PWM inverter using ICBT modules are carried out including all the conduction power losses based upon the measured v-i characteristics of IGBT and its antiparallel diode as well as their switching losses.

• The Transactions of the Korean Institute of Power Electronics
• /
• v.22 no.6
• /
• pp.476-483
• /
• 2017

In this paper, a voltage-based model predictive control (MPC) scheme for a modular multilevel converter is used to reduce switching loss. The proposed method calculates an offset voltage that clamps the switching operation of submodules in which the current greatly flows at every sampling period by using the reference phase voltage and the reference phase current. To use the offset voltage, the proposed method converts the current-based MPC to the voltage-based MPC. The proposed voltage-based MPC then generates a new reference pole voltage that clamps the switching of submodules by applying the calculated offset voltage to the phase voltage. Therefore, the proposed method can reduce the switching loss by stopping the switching operation of submodules in which the current greatly flows. The switching loss reduction effect of the proposed method is verified by comparing its loss data with those of the conventional MPC method.

• The Transactions of the Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers B
• /
• v.53 no.5
• /
• pp.351-357
• /
• 2004

In this paper, we present an analytical method that provides fast and efficient evaluation of the conversion efficiency for switching power supplies. In the proposed method, the conduction losses are evaluated by calculating the effective values of the ideal current waveform first and incorporating them into an exact equivalent circuit model of the switching power supply that includes all the parasitic resistances of the circuit components. While the winding losses and core losses are accurately accounted for the magnetic components, the skin and proximity effects are assumed to be negligible in order to simplify the analysis. The validity and accuracy of the proposed method are verified with experiments on a prototype active-clamped forward converter with synchronous rectification. An excellent correlation between the experiments and theories are obtained for the input voltages of 36-75 V with 4-6 MOSFETs employed for the synchronous rectification.

• Journal of Power Electronics
• /
• v.9 no.6
• /
• pp.823-834
• /
• 2009

This paper proposes a high-efficiency single-stage ac/dc converter. The proposed converter features low voltage stresses and reduced switching losses. It operates at the boundary of discontinuous- and continuous-conduction modes by employing variable switching frequency control. The turn-on switching loss of the switch can be reduced by turning it on when the voltage across it is at a minimum. The voltage across the bulk capacitor is independent of the output loads and maintained within the practical range for the universal line input, so the problem of high voltage stress across the bulk capacitor is alleviated. Moreover, the voltage stress of the output diodes is clamped to the output voltage, and the output diodes are turned off at zero-current. Thus, the reverse-recovery related losses of the output diodes are eliminated. The operational principles and circuit analysis are presented. A prototype circuit was built and tested for a 150 W (50V/3A) output power. The experimental results verify the performance of the proposed converter.

• Journal of the Korean Physical Society
• /
• v.73 no.9
• /
• pp.1356-1361
• /
• 2018

Replacing conventional Si diodes with SiC diodes in Si insulated gate bipolar transistor (IGBT) modules is advantageous as it can reduce power losses significantly. Also, the fast switching nature of the SiC diode will allow Si IGBTs to operate at their full high-switching-speed potential, which at present conventional Si diodes cannot do. In this work, the electrical test results for Si-IGBT/4HSiC-Schottky hybrid substrates (hybrid SiC substrates) are presented. These substrates are built for two voltage ratings, 1.7 kV and 3.3 kV. Comparisons of the 1.7 kV and the 3.3 kV Si-IGBT/Si-diode substrates (Si substrates) at room temperature ($20^{\circ}C$, RT) and high temperature ($H125^{\circ}C$, HT) have shown that the switching losses in hybrid SiC substrates are miniscule as compared to those in Si substrates but necessary steps are required to mitigate the ringing observed in the current waveforms. Also, the effect of design variations on the electrical performance of 1.7 kV, 50 A diodes is reported here. These variations are made in the active and termination regions of the device.

• The Transactions of the Korean Institute of Power Electronics
• /
• v.4 no.1
• /
• pp.19-25
• /
• 1999

To achieve high efficiency in high power and high frequency applications, reduction of switching losses and noise is very important. In this paper, an improved zero voltage switching forward dc/dc converter is proposed. The proposed converter is constructed by using energy recovery snubbers in parallel with the main switches and output diodes of the conventional forward dc/dc converter. Due to the use of the energy recovery snubbers in the primary and secondary side, the proposed converter achieves zero-voltage-switching turn-off without switching losses for switching devices and output rectification diodes. The complete operating principles and experimental results will be presented.

• Journal of Electrical Engineering and Technology
• /
• v.12 no.5
• /
• pp.1872-1882
• /
• 2017

Medium voltage drive systems driven by high-power multi-level inverters operating at low switching frequency can reduce the switching losses of the power device and increase the output power. Employing subsection synchronous current harmonic minimum pulse width modulation (CHMPWM) technique can maintain the total harmonic distortion of current at a very low level. It can also reduce the losses of the system, improve the system control performance and increase the efficiency of DC-link voltage accordingly. This paper proposes a subsection synchronous CHMPWM approach of active neutral point clamped five-level (ANPC-5L) inverter under low switching frequency operation. The subsection synchronous scheme is obtained by theoretical calculation based on the allowed maximum switching frequency. The genetic algorithm (GA) is adopted to get the high-precision initial values. So the expected switching angles can be achieved with the help of sequential quadratic programming (SQP) algorithm. The selection principle of multiple sets of the switching angles is also presented. Finally, the validity of the theoretical analysis and the superiority of the CHMPWM are verified through both the simulation results and experimental results.

• Journal of IKEEE
• /
• v.12 no.4
• /
• pp.239-245
• /
• 2008

In this paper, a dc-dc power converter scheme with the FPGA based technology is proposed to apply for solar power system which has many features such as the good waveform, high efficiency, low switching losses, and low acoustic noises. The circuit configuration is designed by the conventional control type converter circuit using the isolated dc power supply. This new scheme can be more widely used for industrial power conversion system and many other purposes. Also, I proposed an efficient photovoltaic power interface circuit incorporated with a FPGA based DC-DC converter and a sine-pwm control method full-bridge inverter. The FPGA based DC-DC converter operates at high switching frequency to make the output current a sine wave, whereas the full-bridge inverter operates at low switching frequency which is determined by the ac frequency. As a result, we can get a 1.72% low THD in present state using linear control method. Moreover, we can use stepping control method, we can obtain the switching losses by Sp measured as 0.53W. This paper presents the design of a single-phase photovoltaic inverter model and the simulation of its performance.

• Proceedings of the KIPE Conference
• /
• 2002.07a
• /
• pp.525-528
• /
• 2002

A Novel Zero Current Switching(ZCS) Pulse Width Modulation(PWM) boost converter for reducing two rectifiers reverse recovery related losses Is proposed. The switches of the proposed converter are operating to work alternatively turn-on and turn-off with soft switching(ZVS, ZCS) condition. The reverse recovery related switching losses and EMI problems of the proposed converter eliminates the reverse recovery current of the freewheeling diode(D, Dl) by adding the resonant inductor Lr, in series with the switch S2. The voltage and current stresses of the components are similar to those in its conventional hard switching counterpats. As mentioned above, the characteristics are verified through experimental results.