2000V Class IGBT Concept for Renewable Energy Converter

1500Vdc-rated-converter, which touches the upper voltage limitation of Low voltage Directive, emerged recently and is dominating renewable energy markets e.g. photovoltaic. Such full utilization of the voltage limitation is being considered in wind converter market as well. We evaluated 2000V rated IGBT and diode as a suitable device for the major system requirements, which is, optimization for 1500Vdc switching and long term DC bias stability (LTDS) avoiding the cosmic ray effect, or Single Event Burnout (SEB). The preliminary test results confirmed the sufficient switching safe-operating-area (SOA) at 1500Vdc and improvement of LTDS.