Power losses analysis and cooling system design of three topologies of multilevel inverters

This paper presents the comparison of three topologies of multilevel inverters applied to drive an induction motor of 500 kVA/4.16 kV. The multilevel inverters analyzed are: a neutral point clamped inverter, a symmetrical cascaded multilevel inverter and a hybrid asymmetrical cascaded multilevel inverter. The performance indexes used in the comparison are total harmonic distortion, first order distortion factor, semiconductors power losses distribution and heat-sink volume. The comparison is developed with the purpose of finding the efficiency and the heat-sink volume where the three systems present the same output filter. ©2008 IEEE.

Keywords

Cooling, Electric inverters, Induction motors, Land vehicle propulsion, Topology, Wave filters, Cascaded multilevel inverters, Cooling system design, First orders, Multi-level inverters, Neutral point clamped inverters, Output filtering, Performance indexes, Power losses, Total Harmonic Distortion, Power electronics