Gate drive focuses on high voltage IGBT demands
The gate driver is targeting the most demanding applications including wind turbines, locomotive, HVDC and industrial drives.
Launched at PCIM Europe 2014 in Nuremberg, Germany the Amantys gate drive offers a range of innovative protection mechanisms vital for high power applications, combined with Amantys Power Insight in a ‘plug and play’ format. The gate driver launch follows the announcement last week that Amantys has collaborated with industrial fibre optic solutions provider, Avago to implement Amantys Power Insight communications protocol over Avago’s 50 MBd Versatile Link transmitters and receivers to bring improved system information to their users.
At the 3.3 kV, 4.5 kV and 6.5 kV power levels the gate driver must provide reliable and effective protection mechanisms for a variety of fault conditions. The Amantys IGBT gate driver includes a variety of detection mechanisms for different short circuit types including a multi-threshold, programmable comparator which can identify slowly increasing fault currents, a fault mechanism which is not commonly detected in commercially available ‘plug and play’ gate drivers. Once a fault is detected the driver is designed to implement a controlled switch off of the IGBT avoiding the potential for damaging voltage spikes.
The gate driver also includes the Amantys Power Insight condition monitoring and configuration capability to observe and report on critical power switching characteristics as well as enabling in-system configuration of the driver. Designed for the “intelligent control of power”, the Amantys Power Drive is fully integrated and can measure and export critical performance parameters during operation as well as allowing configuration over the existing optical PWM and fault interfaces. These capabilities greatly simplify the design-in process.
The new Amantys Power Drive gate drive operates at voltages from 3300 V up to 6500 V and is configurable for industry standard 190 mm x 130 mm high isolation power modules from manufacturers including ABB, Dynex, Hitachi, Infineon, and Mitsubishi.
Steve Evans, VP of Marketing at Amantys said: “With its extensive protection capabilities, this series of IGBT gate drivers enable customers to design increasingly capable protection into their system, making their products more reliable and resilient than ever. In addition the Amantys Power Insight capability provides the unique capability to observe and tune system performance at each stage of development, as well as through equipment commissioning and into operation.
“The new high voltage range of IGBT Gate Drivers gives our new global distribution partners an even broader range of IGBT Drivers – the only family of gate drives to include Amantys Power Insight for IGBT Modules from 1.2 kV to 6.5 kV. There is already significant interest in this product for applications including wind turbine inverters, industrial drives, HVDC transmission and locomotive traction inverters.”
"We are bringing intelligence control techniques into the area of power electronics," explained Richard Ord, marketing director for Amantys. "It is almost like the same kind of revolution that came to mobile phones when they went from analog to digital. The high power world tends to have the same sort of analog world and we are bringing all of our digital expertise to bear to bring some intelligence to the control of power."
"Our aim is to use communications techniques in high power electronics," suggested Steven Evans, VP Marketing for Amantys. "To turn what is very much a ‘black box’ in systems today into something capable of providing detailed information available on what is going on inside that box. We have done that by implementing a protocol over the standard fiber optics being used in that type of system. We worked with Avago’s fiber optics initially on their 5 Mbaud link but following the collaboration we are now running that same protocol over their 50 Mbaud fiber optics."
"We are looking at how we make the IGBT drive part of the overall control system. In systems today the IGBT and the IGBT driver are controlled through two signals. One is a firing pulse which is a PWM input that switches the IGBT ‘on’ and ‘off’ via the driver and there is also an acknowledge signal back to the control system which simply says whether the switch has worked correctly or not. There is no more information available than that basic data."
"At the high voltage level, which is 1.7 kV and above, most companies are now using fiber optics for those two signals. What we have done is effectively overlaid bi-directional data onto those two fiber optic interfaces so that instead of just being ‘on’ and ‘off’ and ‘acknowledge’ we now have the ability to send data to the gate drive so we can configure it to a particular IGBT module. We also have the ability to receive data back from the gate driver about how things are going in the switching process. So it can be simple data like temperature or we can provide information about how many switch cycles have been implemented. Alternatively, we can send back data about voltages or short circuits or other error conditions. So instead of being a simple ‘black box’ interface we are really now opening up that part of the system to try to provide more useful information."
"The 50 Mbaud rate initiative opens up the potential to provide higher resolution data at a higher bit rate and enables the integration with the latest generations of Avago transmitter and receiver devices which will benefit from lower power consumtption and longer life," explained Evans.
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