The system enables power design engineers to investigate the accuracy of the company’s soft switching architecture and platform over varying load, temperature, device tolerance and degradation conditions.
Pre-Switch’s says its platform, including the Pre-Drive3 controller board, powered by the Pre-Flex FPGA, and RPG gate driver board, virtually eliminates switching losses, enabling fast switching at 100kHz. This is said to improve low torque motor efficiency.
High switching frequency also reduces motor copper and iron losses. For electric vehicles this results in an increase in range of 5-12%. The soft-switching solution also benefits industrial motors, solar, wind and traction applications or any other power converter requirement greater than 100kW that is looking to reduce costs and improve efficiency.
Previously, the limited switching frequency of inverters resulted in a distortion of the output power sine wave causing excessive motor inefficiencies, says Pre-Switch. The CleanWave inverter evaluation system, however, uses Artificial Intelligence to constantly-adjust the relative timing of elements within the switching system required to force a resonance to offset the current and voltage wave forms. This minimises switching losses and increases EV range.
Pre-Switch’s forced-resonant soft-switching topology replaces the traditional IGBT driver or silicon carbide driver with a common intelligent controller board, Pre-Drive3, and a specific plug-in RPG (Resonant Power Gate) module optimised for the customer’s chosen SiC or IGBT package.
