Exploring Improvement in PMSM Drive Performance and Reliability Enabled by Futuristic Power Electronics

As power semiconductor technologies continue to improve, futuristic switching devices, as projected to 10-20 years ahead, with ultra-low-cost and nearly-ideal behaviors (e.g., highly-efficient, minimal impedance imbalance, highly-reliable, etc.), will enable the use of increasingly complex power electronic systems. Currently the design of a permanent magnet synchronous motor drive is partially constrained by the inverter, since the use of more switches incurs additional cost and control complexity, and reduces efficiency. Assuming next-generation semiconductors will enable the use of many switches in the inverter with little penalty, this forward-looking paper considers the use of multilevel inverters with any number of levels, multiphase drives with higher numbers of phases, or a motor with reconfigurable windings, with the objective of opening up the operating space of a motor drive. In addition to exploring the performance benefits to the permanent magnet synchronous motor drive system, we highlight the improved fault-tolerance and therefore reliability of these more complex topologies compared to the conventional two-level three-phase system.