Recent Trend of Inverter and its Control Method for Electric Car

Abstract

Inverters have made a great progress due to the development of power semiconductors. Smaller power convertors offer larger passenger rooms and higher productivity. Convertors on-board can be much smaller if we utilize 3.3 kV or 4.5 kV IGBTs and two-level convertors instead of three-level ones. Smaller loss and smaller harmonics are always expected for convertors to enable self-cooling and avoid additional measures for EMC requirements.
If 10-40 kV power semiconductors are available, it may be possible to realize transformerless railway vehicles for the 25 kV ac system by assigning convertors with the role of the main transformer in the traction circuit.