Measurement of Parasitic Inductances in the Bus-Bar Assembly of a High Power Voltage Source Converter

摘要

Insulated gate bipolar transistor (IGBT) based voltage source converters use copper plates with insulating sheets in between them (sandwich bus-bar arrangement) for connecting the different device terminals in the power circuit. In such converters, the parasitic inductances in the power circuit are crucial as they cause overvoltage spikes across the device. Also, the parasitics affect the current sharing between IGBTs when they are connected in parallel in high power converters. The conduction path through plates and fasteners in the bus-bar assembly is three-dimensional and quite complex, making analytical evaluation of the stray inductance quite challenging. The first objective here is to present a simple experimental setup and experimental procedure, which are convenient for power electronic engineers, to measure the bus-bar inductance. The next objective is to carry out experimental studies on the inductances offered by different components and sub-assemblies in a bus-bar assembly. This includes evaluation of inductances of the different conduction paths in typical bus-bar plates. The third objective is to experimentally evaluate the parasitic inductances in the bus-bar assembly of a commercial 250 kVA high power converter. Each leg of this converter consists of two 300 A/1200 V IGBTs connected in parallel. The effective inductance seen by the individual device modules are determined experimentally.