Advances in CSI-fed induction motor drives

The application of current source inverters (CSI) in induction motor (IM) drives offers a number of advantages, including: voltage boosting capability, natural shoot-through short-circuit protection and generation of sinusoidal voltages. The exact generation of sinusoidal voltages is possible thanks to thanks to the effect of the output ac filter capacitors and may improve the accuracy of sensorless IM control. The elimination of high dv/dt in CSI fed IM drives provides also a noticeable electromagnetic interference (EMI) reduction. The paper presents recent achievements of current source inverters (CSI) which are the use of new generation silicon carbide (SiC) devices (normally-off SiC JFETs and SiC Schottky diodes) and the application of modern nonlinear control which may considerably improve the performance of CSI fed IM drives.