Investigation of Series-Connected IGBTs in Fast High-Voltage Circuit Breaker

AbstractThe ECRH system on J-TEXT tokamak requires fast circuit breakers as switches to cut off the 80 kV power supply within 20 μs when failure occurs. Series connected IGBTs is a better choice for the breaker than mechanical switch and thyristor in this case. The voltage balance among IGBTs is the main issue that needs investigation. This paper presents a two-stage active gate trigger time compensation method to ensure the voltage balance among IGBTs. The test environment consists of a 1500 V/10 A circuit with 3 IGBTs which are connected in series. The experimental result shows that the method can effectively improve the dynamic-voltage balance and has a certain extent meaning for the solution of voltage balance of series connected IGBTs .

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