• The Transactions of the Korean Institute of Power Electronics
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• v.14 no.6
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• pp.514-521
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• 2009

This paper deals with a new overvoltage snubber for a diode-clamped 3-level IGBT inverter. Usually most power converters use snubber circuits to protect the switching devices from voltage spike. However, it is difficult for the diode-clamped multi-level converter to be protected from voltage spike with overvoltage snubber since the series connection of the switching devices. To solve the problem the characteristic of a overvoltage snubber for a DC-DC converter is analyzed, and a new snubber for a diode clamped 3-level inverter is proposed. The performance of the proposed snubber is verified through experiments.

• Journal of Electrical Engineering and Technology
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• v.10 no.3
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• pp.1066-1074
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• 2015

This paper presents the reverse recovery characteristic according to the change of switching states when Si diode and SiC diode are used as clamp diode and proposes a method to minimize the switching loss containing the reverse recovery loss in the neutral-point-clamped inverter at low modulation index. The previous papers introduce many multiple circuits replacing Si diode with SiC diode to reduce the switching loss. In the neutral-point-clamped inverter, the switching loss can be also reduced by replacing device in the clamp diode. However, the switching loss in IGBT is large and the reduced switching loss cannot be still neglected. It is expected that the reverse recovery effect can be infrequent and the switching loss can be considerably reduced by the proposed method. Therefore, it is also possible to operate the inverter at the higher frequency with the better system efficiency and reduce the volume, weight and cost of filters and heatsink. The effectiveness of the proposed method is verified by numerical analysis and experiment results.

• Journal of the Semiconductor & Display Technology
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• v.14 no.4
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• pp.72-77
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• 2015

Three-level diode clamped multilevel inverter, generally known as neutral point clamped (NPC) inverter, has an inherent problem causing neutral point (NP) potential variation. Until now, the NP potential problem of variation has been investigated and lots of solutions have also been proposed. This paper presents a neutral point voltage control technology using the anti-windup PI controller and offset technology of PWM (Pulse Width Modulation) to control the variation of NPC 3-phase three-level inverter neutral point voltage. And the proposed algorithm is tested and verified using a PLL (Phase Locked Loop) in order to synchronize the phase voltage from the line voltage of grid. It significantly improves the voltage balancing under a solar fluctuation conditions of the inverter. Experimental results show the good performance and effectiveness of the proposed method.

• Proceedings of the KIPE Conference
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• 2008.06a
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• pp.385-387
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• 2008

Three-level Diode Clamped Multilevel Inverter, generally known as Neutral-Point-Clamped(NPC) inverter, has an inherent problem causing Neutral Point(NP) potential variation. Until now, in many literatures NP potential problem has been investigated and lots of solutions have also been proposed. However, in the case of NP potential variation was rarely published from the standpoint of reliability. In this paper, NP potential is analytically investigated both normal and fault conditions under carrier based PWM. Subsequently, relation between fault detection time and size of capacitor is analyzed. This information is explored by simulation results, which contribute to enhance the reliability of the NPC inverter system.

• Journal of Power Electronics
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• v.19 no.3
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• pp.702-713
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• 2019

Multilevel Inverters (MLIs) are widely used in medium voltage applications due to their various advantages. In addition, there are numerous types of MLIs for such applications. However, the diode-less 3-level (3L) T-type Neutral Point Clamped (NPC) MLI is the most advantageous due to its low conduction losses and high potential efficiency. The power circuit of a 3L T-type NPC is derived by the conventional two level inverter by a slight modification. In order to explore the MLI performance for various Pulse Width Modulation (PWM) schemes, this paper examines the operation of a 3L (five level line to line) T-type NPC MLI for various types of Multi-Carriers Pulse Width Modulation (MCPWM) schemes. These PWM schemes are compared in terms of their voltage profile, total harmonic distortion (THD) and conduction losses. In addition, a 3L T-type NPC MLI is also compared with the conventional NPC in terms of number of switches, clamping diodes, main diodes and capacitors. Moreover, the capacitor-balancing problem is also investigated using the Neutral Point Fluctuation (NPF) method with all of the MCPWM schemes. A 1kW 3L T-type NPC MLI is simulated in MATLAB/Simulink and implemented experimentally and its performance is tested with a 1HP induction motor. The results indicate that the 3L T-type NPC MLI has better performance than conventional NPC MLIs.

• The Transactions of the Korean Institute of Power Electronics
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• v.14 no.4
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• pp.333-342
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• 2009

Three-level Diode Clamped Multilevel Inverter, generally known as Neutral-Point-Clamped (NPC) Inverter, has an inherent problem causing Neutral Point (NP) potential variation. Until now, in many literatures NP potential problem has been investigated and lots of solutions have also been proposed. However, under fault and fault tolerant control, distinctive feature for NP potential variation problem was rarely published from the standpoint of reliability. In this paper, NP potential is analytically investigated both normal and faulty conditions under carrier based PWM. Subsequently, relation between fault detection time and size of capacitor is analyzed. This information is explored by simulation and experiment results, which contribute to enhance the reliability of inverter system.

• The Transactions of the Korean Institute of Power Electronics
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• v.7 no.2
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• pp.111-120
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• 2002

The multi-level inverter system is very promising in ac drives, when both reduced harmonic contents and high power are required. In case of multi-level inverter system, the loss of switch devices cannot be analyzed by conventional methods. The reason is that the loss of each the switch device is different from one another unlike 2-level. In this paper, a simple and accurate method of computing conduction and switching loss is proposed for multi-level inverter system. The validity of the proposed method is proven for 3-level and 4-revel diode clamped inverter system.

• Proceedings of the KIPE Conference
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• 1998.11a
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• pp.33-37
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• 1998

For the high power variable speed applications, the DCTLI(diode clamped three-level inverter) have been widely used. This paper describes the analysis of the neutral point current of the DCTLI and the improved space vector-based PWM strategy considering the switching frequency of power devices, that minimizes the fluctuation of the neutral point current in spite of high modulation index region and low power factor. It contributes to decrease the capacitance of dc-link capacitor bank and to increase the neutral point voltage controllable region. Especially, even if second (or even) order harmonic is induced in load current (at this situation, is was investigated that the general control method can not suppress the neutral point voltage variation), this PWM can provide effective control method to suppress the neutral point voltage variation. Various simulation results by means of Matlab/Simulation are presented to verify the proposed PWM.

• The Transactions of the Korean Institute of Power Electronics
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• v.15 no.4
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• pp.288-295
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• 2010

Multi-level inverters have drawn much of attention in recent years because it can meet the demand of high power applications and good power quality associated with reduced harmonic distortion. As the number of voltage level increases, field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) are suitable for the implementation of multi-level modulation algorithm. This paper proposes the implementation method for generating PWM pulses at the three phase diode clamped five-level inverter using FPGA. The strategy for communicating stably the data of three-phase reference voltages between the DSP and FPGA is suggested. The techniques for generating PWM signals based on a multi-carrier modulation method are carried out through the experiments with 32-bit DSP and Cyclone-III FPGA.

• The Transactions of the Korean Institute of Power Electronics
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• v.22 no.4
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• pp.369-372
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• 2017

This paper presents a control scheme for three-level NPC inverters using small DC-link capacitors. To reduce the inverter system volume, the film capacitor with small capacitance is a promising candidate for the DC-link. When small capacitors are applied in a three level inverter, however, the AC ripple component increases in the DC-link NPV (neutral point voltage). In addition, the three-phase input grid currents are distorted when the DC-link capacitors are fed by diode rectifier. In this paper, the additional circuit is applied to compensate for small capacitor systems defect, and the offset voltage injection method is presented for the stabilization in NPV. These two proposed processes evidently ensure the quality improvement of the input grid currents and output load currents. The feasibility of the proposed method is verified by experimental results.