A cost-effective solution to power the gate drivers of multilevel inverters using the bootstrap power supply technique

Klumpner, Christian; Shattock, Nicholas

Abstract

Multilevel inverters are traditionally seen as a step forward in DC/AC conversion, providing more output voltage levels, better quality of the generated waveform and lower switching losses than the two-level and can process higher voltages with a given forced commutated switch technology. There are also drawbacks associated with this technology: more switching devices and associated gate driver circuitry, more complex modulation and control of the DC-link capacitor voltage sharing etc, which as of now limit its application to the high voltage/power range. This paper proposes a cost-effective solution to implement the power supply needed for powering the gate drivers based on the bootstrap supply technology, which will not need isolated DC/DC supplies for each gate driver, reducing the overall cost of a multilevel assembly and making it more appealing for lower power applications.

Citation

Klumpner, C., & Shattock, N. (2009). A cost-effective solution to power the gate drivers of multilevel inverters using the bootstrap power supply technique. In 2009 Twenty-Fourth Annual IEEE Applied Power Electronics Conference and Exposition. https://doi.org/10.1109/APEC.2009.4802910

• Conference Name: 2009 IEEE Applied Power Electronics Conference and Exposition (APEC 2009)
• End Date: Feb 19, 2009
• Acceptance Date: Oct 3, 2008
• Publication Date: Feb 15, 2009
• Deposit Date: Jul 14, 2016
• Publicly Available Date: Jul 14, 2016
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Book Title: 2009 Twenty-Fourth Annual IEEE Applied Power Electronics Conference and Exposition
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1109/APEC.2009.4802910
• Keywords: Driver Circuits, Invertors, Power Capacitors
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/705337
• Publisher URL: http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/articleDetails.jsp?arnumber=4802910
• Related Public URLs: http://www.ieee.org/conferences_events/conferences/conferencedetails/index.html?Conf_ID=14362
• Additional Information: Published in: APEC 2009 : Twenty-Fourth Annual IEEE Applied Power Electronics Conference and Exposition : February 15-19, 2009, Marriott Wardman Park Hotel, Washington, DC. Piscataway, N.J. : IEEE, 2009. ISBN: 978-1-422-2812-0 pp. 1773-1779, doi:10.1109/APEC.2009.4802910 © 2009 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works.