A 100kW Forced-Air-Cooled SiC MOSFET Converter Achieving a Power Density of 1.657kW/L and an Efficiency over 98.5%

There is a constant demand for high power density and high efficiency electric power conversion for various applications, such as renewable power generation and transportation electrification. Although silicon-carbide (SiC) devices have been perceived as a potential solution to meet the power density and efficiency targets, there is a lack of benchmarking results regarding SiC converter capabilities at high power levels e.g. 100kW+. Therefore, this paper presents the design and development of a 100kW forced-air-cooled SiC converter achieving a high power density of 1.657kW/L and an efficiency of 98.5% as a benchmark for high-power SiC converters. The design of various key components such as dc-link busbar, cooling system/heatsink, line inductors and the selection of parameters including the switching frequency, dc-link capacitance and line inductance have been presented. Practical thermal and mechanical design considerations to improve the power density have been given in the paper. The electro-magnetic, thermal and mechanical performance of the designed converter has been verified in experiment as a grid-connected converter at various power levels up to 100kW.