New energy recovery snubber configurations for IGBT inverters

New inductive turn-on snubber energy recovery configurations for high power inverters using insulated gate bipolar transistors (IGBT) are proposed. Each circuit incorporates a soft-clamping circuit to limit main switch over-shoot voltage at turn-off. The energy trapped in the snubber is passively recovered into the DC supply, and the peak switch current is low. Simulations and experimentations show that presented configurations are suitable for use in high power IGBT inverters.