Pulse-width modulated (PWM) inverters are known to generate common mode voltages which cause motor bearing currents in the induction motor drives. They also result in leakage currents which act as sources of conducted electromagnetic interference in the drive system. The common mode voltage generated by a conventional three-level inverter can be eliminated by switching only the voltage space vectors which do not produce the common mode voltage. This paper presents a PWM switching strategy to eliminate common mode voltage using the open-end winding configuration for the induction motor. The switching strategy presented in this paper, does not generate any alternating common mode voltages in the drive system and hence the electrostatic coupling of the common mode voltage, which results in the bearing currents and the leakage currents, is avoided. The proposed scheme is devoid of neutral point voltage fluctuations and does not require neutral point clamping diodes, when compared to the common mode elimination scheme based on the conventional three-level inverter topology. Also, the present scheme uses a single dc-link with half the voltage compared to the conventional three-level inverter based scheme. Index Terms-Common mode voltage, open-end winding induction motor drive. NOMENCLATURE The dc-link voltage of the neutral point clamped three-level inverter. The pole voltages of INV1. The pole voltages of INV2. The voltage across the phase windings of the induction machine. The combined voltage space phasor for , and. The combined reference voltage space phasor for the dual inverter. The individual reference voltage space phasor for inverter-1 (INV1). The components of along theaxes. The components of along theaxes. The angle of the combined reference space phasor with the A-phase axis.

A pulse width modulation (PWM) scheme for multilevel inverters is proposed. The proposed PWM scheme generates the inverter leg switching times, from the sampled reference phase voltage amplitudes and centres the switching times for the middle vectors, in a sampling interval, as in the case of conventional space vector PWM (SVPWM). The SVPWM scheme, presented for multilevel inverters, can also work in the overmodulation range, using only the sampled amplitudes of reference phase voltages. The present PWM technique does not involve any sector identification and considerably reduces the computation time when compared to the conventional space vector PWM technique. The present PWM signal generation scheme can be used for any multilevel inverter configuration. A five-level inverter configuration, using an openended winding induction motor drive, is used to verify the SVPWM generation scheme experimentally.

A current-error space-vector-based PWM hysteresis controller is proposed for three-level voltage source inverter fed induction motor drive applications. A hexagonal boundary for the current-error space vector is formed by sensing the current-error space vector along three different axes, which are 1201 apart and are orthogonal to machine phase axes. Only the adjacent inverter voltage vectors forming a triangular sector, in which tip of the machine voltage vector lies, are switched to keep the current-error space vector within the hexagonal boundary. Selection amongst the three nearest voltage vectors is done by a simple region detection logic in all the sectors. Calculation of the machine voltage vector is not needed and information of the same is indirectly derived from the direction of current-error space vector. The controller uses a self-adaptive sector identification logic, which provides smooth transition between sectors (voltage levels), including over modulation region up to 12-step mode of operation. Inherent advantages of current hysteresis controller are retained with the added advantage of adjacent voltage vector selection for hysteresis PWM control. Simple look-up tables are only needed for sector and vector selection, based on the hysteresis controller output, for the proposed hysteresis PWM controller. Experimental verification is provided by implementing the proposed controller on a 1.5 kW open-end winding induction motor drive. The proposed controller can be extended for further levels of multi-level inverters for high-performance drives by constructing suitable look-up tables.

No abstract

A scheme for a three-level voltage space phasor generation with common-mode voltage elimination is proposed. An open-end-winding induction motor, fed from both ends by two threelevel inverters, which are realised by a cascading two two-level inverter, is used in this configuration. The voltage space vectors of individual three-level inverters, which generate the same commonmode voltage in the inverter pole voltage, are variously grouped. When these voltage space vectors are used to switch individual three-level inverters, it results in zero common-mode voltage across the motor windings. In the proposed scheme, voltage space phasors from individual inverters with zero common-mode voltage in the inverter pole voltage are used for PWM control. For the proposed drive configuration, the DC link voltage requirement is only half when compared to the DC link voltage of a conventional neutral-point-clamped (NPC) three-level inverter. The proposed inverter configuration offers reduced circuit and control complexity when compared to similar schemes with NPC or H-bridge inverter configurations.