Educational synthesis for LCL Filter Design and Performance Analysis for a 20-kW, 25-kHz SiC inverter

Energy and power density improvement constitutes a big challenge in power inverters. A substantial augmentation of energy and power densities is possible by increasing the switching frequency of the inverter. Silicon carbide (SiC) is a semiconductor material suitable for high power applications which allows devices to operate at higher frequencies than conventional semiconductor materials. However, due to the switching of the inverter, current harmonics are injected into the grid. Voltage and current harmonic contents must be reduced in order to comply with grid codes and, for this purpose, LCL filters are generally used. In this activity, undergraduate students will learn to design the LCL filter for a given PV inverter using Simulink. Moreover, this paper provides a procedure that uses a Finite Element Method (FEM) to design the inverter-side inductor of an LCL filter for a 20-kW, 25-kHz SiC inverter.