Protection of digitally controlled inverter units in rapid prototyping applications

Mandatory and optional protection features of a modular power electronic inverter unit are described. Special attention is paid to the potential of using the digital system processing core in the implementation of these protection features. It is shown, however, that in rapid prototyping (RP) systems, there is an interesting option of using a digital interface between the RP system and the inverter to implement the protection features. Experimental results verify that such an interface enables the use of the inverter unit in system development based on hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) without the need for elaborate system simulations or validation, cutting development time considerably