PEBB concept applications in high power electronics converters

Demand for use of power electronics continues to increase, reaching many tens of MW and even greater than 100 MW. The size of power electronics is a real handicap for serving this demand. Power Electronics Building Block (PEBB) is a generic strategic concept incorporating several technology aspects which have been foreseen as key to major reduction in cost, losses, size and weight of power electronics. The value of integration can be enhanced with standardization of interfaces of the building blocks and control/protections requirements. Therefore beyond the concept of physical building blocks, one must look to other aspects of integration, such as layout of building blocks, bus work connecting the blocks and standardization in order to derive the maximum benefits from the integration concepts. ONR has funded several manufacturers to develop PEBBs for a broad range of applications. Some of these designs are now commercially available, some are under development. This paper will describe the latest PEBB based applications and will introduce new concepts and technologies such as the Hybrid-Cascade concept for the High Fidelity Power Drive which combines step-mode switching with pulse-width modulation to minimize both switching and conduction losses as well as current harmonic distortions.