A new voltage class 2.3 kV IGBT enables new solutions for 1500 VDC system

Inhalt:
There are three main challenges for solar or energy storage systems (ESS) nowadays: reduce costs, increase efficiency, and increase power density compared with previous systems. Increasing system voltage can reduce wire loss, improve efficiency, and reduces the overall system costs at the same time. For these reasons, the 1500 V DC system is widely used in solar, energy storage system, and some other applications. The 1500 V DC systems require high-voltage system solutions with higher performance and reliability as compared to former 1000 V DC systems. Keeping this in mind, Infineon developed the new 2.3 kV voltage class IGBT modules, FF1800R23IE7 especially for 1500 V DC highpower applications such as the solar central inverter. To meet the requirements for high efficiency in solar or ESS applications, a new common collector module, FF2400RB12IP7 was also developed that can combine with the 2.3 kV module to form the NPC2 topology. This paper describes the solution based on this module, and a power stack was built to evaluate the performance of the 2.3 kV solution.