Development experience of trouble free working of low KVA IGBT based PWM converter with emphasis on electromagnetic field and interference suppression

Power electronic converters using self commutated devices such as power MOSFETs and IGBTs (isolated gate bipolar transistor) have made their presence felt in the industrial applications. The design and development experience varies with the engineers. However, there are always some experiences which form the bottom line and if shared would be of good help to the other design engineers. The paper presents the experience on development of a low KVA IGBT based converter for reactive power compensation with emphasis on converter component layout, grounding, earthing, PCB design care and many other relevant issues to achieve a reliable operations against the given EMI ambient within a cubicle.