Design, Analysis and Development of a SiC based 15 kVA General Purpose Inverter Stack for High Frequency Applications

This paper discusses the analysis, component selection and testing of a 15kVA general purpose inverter stack (GPIS) developed in the laboratory for high frequency applications like arc welding, induction heating etc. SiC devices are well suited in high power and high frequency applications, due to their known advantages advantages over their Silicon (Si) counterparts. The design and component selection procedure is discussed in detail for the developed GPIS. Hardware details of the various subsystems of the general purpose inverter stack is also presented in this paper. The SiC MOSFETs used in the GPIS are driven by a gate driver card (tested upto 2 MHz), developed in the laboratory. The converter has been tested at 12 kVA and 200 kHz. A high power conversion efficiency has been achieved (97.57%). Excellent agreement between simulated and practical performance at very high frequencies highlights precision of the work. This work is also expected to aid interested hardware enthusiasts who are also developing advanced power converter hoards even starting from scratch.