Medium voltage power converter design and demonstration using 15 kV SiC N-IGBTs

This paper summarizes the different steps that have been undertaken to design medium voltage power converters using the state-of-the-art 15 kV SiC N-IGBTs. The 11 kV switching characterization results, 11 kV high dv/dt gate driver validation, and the heat-run test results of the SiC IGBT at 10 kV, 550 W/cm² (active area) have been recently reported as individual topics. In this paper, it is attempted to link all these individual topics and present them as a complete subject from the double pulse tests to the converter design, for evaluating these novel high voltage power semiconductor devices. In addition, the demonstration results of two-level H-Bridge and three-level NPC converters, both at 10 kV dc input, are being presented for the first-time. Lastly, the performance of two-chip IGBT modules for increased current capability and demonstration of three-level poles, built using these modules, at 10 kV dc input with sine-PWM and square-PWM modulation for rectifier and dc-dc stages of a three-phase solid state transformer are presented.