Comparison of switching devices in scalable switch concept for medium voltage medium frequency power conversion

This paper provides a comparison of switch concepts for medium frequency (MF) medium voltage (MV) applications in the lower power range (<500 kW). An introduction briefly reviews recent switch and converter developments and points out example applications which will benefit from a MF-MV-scalable switch concept. Different semiconductor switching devices are compared, in scalable concepts using the series connection, for MV-suited switches/converters, with a special focus on medium frequency applications (>> 1 kHz). The comparison is based on measurements of actual discrete switches for hard-switched and ZVS forward topologies. It is shown that standard low power IGBTs in a scalable switch can be used to obtain the lowest losses and cost with the additional benefit of significantly higher possible switching frequencies