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Independent switching technique to remove abnormal output voltage in hybrid active NPC inverters

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Abstract

This paper proposes the independent switching technique to remove abnormal output voltage in hybrid active neutral-point clamped (ANPC) inverters. The hybrid ANPC inverter is composed by mixing silicon (Si) devices and silicon carbide (SiC) devices, unlike the conventional ANPC inverter which is generally composed of Si devices only. SiC devices provide low switching losses under a high switching frequency and a high withstand ability under high temperature compared with Si devices. Therefore, the hybrid ANPC inverter using SiC devices provides low power losses, high efficiency, and high reliability compared with the conventional ANPC inverters. In this hybrid ANPC inverter, abnormal output voltages are generated when the sinusoidal output current crosses the zero point. The abnormal output voltages are momentary pulses that must not be generated, and these pulses distort the output current and degrade the power quality. These pulses have two typical causes: one is from the switching operation time difference between switches, and the other is from deadtime. This paper proposes the independent switching technique to remove the abnormal voltages caused by the two reasons and verifies the proposed technique by simulation and experiment.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the “Human Resources Program in Energy Technology” of the Korea Institute of Energy Technology Evaluation and Planning, and received financial resource from the Ministry of Trade, Industry, and Energy, Republic of Korea (No. 20194030202370). This work was also supported by the Korea Electric Power Research Institute grant funded by the KEPCO (R19DA09, Development of power control technologies on DER to increase DER hosting capacity in distribution system).

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  1. Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Ajou University, Suwon, Korea

    Min-Geun Song, Seok-Min Kim & Kyo-Beum Lee

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  1. Min-Geun Song
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  2. Seok-Min Kim
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Correspondence to Kyo-Beum Lee.

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Song, MG., Kim, SM. & Lee, KB. Independent switching technique to remove abnormal output voltage in hybrid active NPC inverters. J. Power Electron. 21, 85–93 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s43236-020-00170-z

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s43236-020-00170-z

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