A Novel Multilevel Inverter Fed Open-End Winding Coupled-Induction Motor Drive for Sugar Industry

In this article, a novel multilevel inverter (MLI) fed Open-End Winding Coupled-Induction Motor (OEWCIM) drive is presented for shredding sugarcane in sugar industry. The existing two types of drives have some inherent shortcomings. The wound rotor induction motor (WRIM) drive has huge slip power loss, poor speed regulation and un-equal load sharing, whereas, the 2-level inverter based variable frequency drive (VFD) has drawbacks such as injection of a large harmonics current in the input supply network, high dV/dt stress on the inverter switches and high common mode voltage (CMV). The proposed drive addresses these drawbacks. The drive is a 3-level inverter based drive with an 18-pulse AC-DC converter with reduced hardware components. For the proposed drive a prototype is developed for which OPAL-RT is used as controller. The simulation and the experimental results are presented to validate the efficacy of the proposed drive for the application.