A High Efficiency Three-level Active Neutral Point Clamped Inverter Using Hybrid Si/SiC Switches

This paper presents a high efficiency three-level Active Neutral-point Clamped (ANPC) inverter topology employing Silicon (Si) IGBTs for low frequency switches and hybrid Silicon (Si) and Silicon Carbide (SiC) switches for high frequency switches. The proposed semiconductor device configuration reduces both conduction and switching losses of the inverter so that a high efficiency, 99.5% peak, is achieved. The efficiency of the proposed ANPC inverter system is investigated and compared with other ANPC inverter configurations for different switching frequency and power factor values using PLECS. The investigation results show that the proposed ANPC inverter topology has higher efficiency than other ANPC inverter topologies for wide range of switching frequency and load power factor values. The cost of the semiconductor devices for the proposed inverter system is also estimated using off-the-shelf component prices obtained from Digi-key website. The cost estimation shows that the proposed ANPC inverter system has a cost at par with its silicon counterpart. Furthermore, since the proposed inverter system can be operated at much higher switching frequency compared to a silicon based inverter system, the cost of the passive components will be much lower.