Growth Patterns and Tasks of Power Electronics Apparatuses

Abstract

The power electronics apparatuses in the fields of transmission & distribution, industry and electric railway have made a very radical progress since 1960s, when the semiconductor power devices started to be applied practically. This paper presents the history of development in each field from the aspects of power device, main circuit and control method. Technical trends common to those fields are the concentration of main circuit to the voltage source inverter with MOS gate power devices, and high performance digital control circuit with micro processors. Tasks for the growth are the R&Ds aimed to overcome the demerits of power electronics, for examples, voltage surge, EMI and so on, to develop power electronics apparatuses applied to various power supply systems, and to harmonize stress with timing in R&D process.