Journal
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER ELECTRONICS
Volume 36, Issue 9, Pages 9806-9825Publisher
IEEE-INST ELECTRICAL ELECTRONICS ENGINEERS INC
DOI: 10.1109/TPEL.2021.3062620
Keywords
Insulated gate bipolar transistors; Junctions; Temperature distribution; Reliability; Current density; Reactive power; Multichip modules; Annual damage; conventional insulated gate bipolar transistor (IGBT) (Con-IGBT); hotspot temperature; lifetime; low; fundamental-frequency temperature swing; modular multilevel converter (MMC); reverse conducting IGBT (RC-IGBT); thermal distribution; thermal performance
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Funding
- National Key Research and Development Program of China [2018YFB0905801, 2019YFE0122800]
- National Natural Science Foundation of China [U1966212]
- Science and Technology Project from the Headquarters of State Grid Company, Ltd. [SGAH0000KJJS1900437]
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This study compares the thermal performance of RC-IGBT and Con-IGBT modules in MMC, showing that RC-IGBT can significantly improve the module's thermal performance and extend its lifetime when the power factor is greater than 0.4. The advantages of RC-IGBT in thermal performance are also verified by experiments, providing a guideline for the design of MMC submodules.
Insulated gate bipolar transistor (IGBT) modules in modular multilevel converters (MMCs) have inherent unbalanced power loss distribution and temperature swing. Some chips may become the hotspots and have much larger temperature swing than others, which seriously compromises the lifetime of the IGBT modules. Therefore, effective improvement measures that are low cost become crucial for the IGBT modules in MMC. Reverse conducting IGBT (RC-IGBT) constructs the IGBT and freewheel diode in a single chip, which has the advantages of lower thermal resistance, lower switching loss, and larger heat capacity. In this article, a new generation of RC-IGBT module and conventional IGBT (Con-IGBT) module from Fuji Electric with the same packaging are both used in the MMC. A newly defined current density for RC-IGBT and Con-IGBT module is proposed. The thermal performances and annual damages of the two modules under different power factors are comprehensively compared at the same module current density. The results show that when the power factor is greater than 0.4, using RC-IGBT can significantly improve the thermal performance of MMC submodules (SMs) and extend their lifetime. In addition, the reasons for the comparison results are also discussed in this article. Finally, the advantages of RC-IGBT in terms of thermal performances are verified by experiment. This article also provides a guideline for the design of MMC SMs.
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