Comparison of Pulse Current Capability of Different Switches for Modular Multilevel Converter-based Arbitrary Wave shape Generator used for Dielectric Testing of High Voltage Grid Assets

This article compares the pulse current capability of various Semiconductor (SM) device technologies for Modular Multilevel Converter (MMC)-based High Voltage (HV) Arbitrary Waveform Generator (AWG) for dielectric testing of grid assets to find the most suitable SM device technology which can perform well in generating lightning impulse that demands a high peak current for a relatively short time. For the typical HV loads of the AWG, Lightning Impulse (LI) test may require a pulse current to rise to 1.7 kA in 0.2 µs. It is essential to highlight that most other dielectric tests performed with an HV AWG demand a relatively low current such as less than 10 A. Therefore, TO-packaged semiconductors would be well-suited for a large number of tests other than short impulses. To optimize the size and cost of the HV AWG, this paper evaluates the pulse current capabilities of TO-packaged semiconductors for the above-mentioned current requirement to generate LI waveform. The first comparison is made among Non-Punch Through (NPT) Si IGBT, Field Stop (FS) Si IGBT, Si MOSFET, and SiC MOSFETs with roughly the same current rating of 40 A. It is found that the Si MOSFET gives the fastest rise time of 0.42 µs and the NPT IGBT gives the highest current amplification factor of almost 12 times greater than its own rated current. However, 3rd Generation SiC MOSFET combines Si MOSFET and NPT IGBT capabilities to generate a fast rise time and high peak pulse current. Additionally, the FS IGBT is compared with the SiC MOSFET. The SiC MOSFET performs better in peak current capability and the obtained rise time. All in all, the research results and the stringent HV AWG requirements for LI show that the application requires a relatively complex switch implementation with far superior current capability than in normal operation. Therefore, a parallel connection of several TO-packaged devices is necessary to generate LI from MMC-based HV AWG.