Minimum current magnitude control of surface PM synchronous machines during constant power operation

The dual-mode inverter control (DMIC) was initially developed to provide broad constant power speed range (CPSR) operation for a surface mounted permanent magnet machine (PMSM) having low inductance. The DMIC interfaces the output of a common voltage source inverter (VSI) to the PMSM through an ac voltage controller. The ac voltage controller consists of three pairs of anti-parallel silicon controlled rectifiers (SCRs), one anti-parallel SCR pair in series with each winding of the motor. In a recent paper a fundamental frequency model of DMIC type controllers was developed using an equivalent reactance interpretation of the in-line SCRs. In this work, the same fundamental frequency model is used to show that the DMIC may have considerable loss reduction benefits even if the motor winding inductance is large. Specifically, it is shown that the SCRs enable maximum watts per rms amp control during constant power operation. The rms motor current can be minimized for any given power level and sufficiently large speed with DMIC. A fixed winding inductance and a conventional inverter can only be optimized for a single speed and power level. The performance predicted by the fundamental frequency model of the DMIC is compared to that of a conventional PMSM drive where the motor has sufficiently large inductance to achieve an infinite CPSR. It is shown that the SCRs can reduce motor current by a factor of 0.7071 at high speed and rated power. This would reduce the motor copper losses by 50% and reduce the conduction losses in the VSI by 29.3%. At less than rated power the percentage of motor/VSI loss reduction enabled by the SCRs is seen to be even larger.