Power Electronics for Renewable Energy Systems, Transportation and Industrial Applications

Chapter 20The Electrical Drive Systems with the Current Source Converter

Marcin Morawiec and Zbigniew Krzeminski

Department of Automatic Control of Electrical Drives, Gdansk University of Technology, Gdansk, Poland

20.1 Introduction

Digital-circuit engineering allows the use of high-efficiency microprocessors or signal processor applications in power converters. These high-performance processors have high-frequency clock timing and cache memory. The arithmetic-logic operations with floating point processors are not the cause, and the operation time is shorter than a few years ago. As a result, it is possible to implement more complicated applications with advanced control systems. The circuits used for power conversion applied in drives with induction motors (IMs) are classified into two groups: voltage source inverters (VSIs) and current source inverters (CSIs). The VSIs are used more often than the CSIs because of their better properties. Nowadays, the development of power electronic devices has enormous influence on applications of systems based on the CSI and creates new possibilities.

In the 1980s, CSIs were the main commonly used electric machine feeding devices. Characteristic features of those drives were the motor electromagnetic torque pulsations, the voltage and the current with higher harmonic content. The CSI comprised a thyristor bridge and large inductance and commutation capacitors. Serious problems in such drive systems were unavoidable in overvoltage cases ...