Experimental Validation of Parallel Connection of RB-IGCTs for High Efficiency Solid State Circuit Breaker

Abstract

The proliferation of high efficiency, high current DC distribution systems is held back by the limited choices when it comes to solid-state circuit breakers. With this work, we investigated the parallel connection of Reverse Blocking IGCTs (RB-IGCT) for a solid-state circuit breaker with a nominal current up to 3 kA. The presented breaker topology is based on the parallel connection of low conduction loss RB-IGCTs which delivers efficiency as high as 99.9%. The focus of his paper is on the design and experimental validation of a parallel connection of two and three RB-IGCTs with an emphasis on current sharing during nominal operation and short circuit transients. The experimental results confirm that the parallel connection of both two and three RB-IGCTs can successfully handle the nominal operation current - up to 3 kA continuously - with current deviation from the mean as little as 1-5%. Moreover, the parallel topology is able to perform current interruption during overload and short-circuit situations up to 10 kA for two devices in parallel and up to 13 kA for three devices in parallel.