High efficiency three-phase power factor correction rectifier using SiC switches

This paper presents designing procedure of a high efficiency 5 kW silicon-carbide (SiC) based three-phase power factor correction (PFC). SiC switches present low capacitive switching loss compared to the alternative Si switches. Therefore, the switching frequency can be increased and hence the size of the line filter (generally reactive components) will be reduced. However, to achieve high efficiency an optimized switching frequency has to be selected. Accordingly the reactive components especially inductors are designed. The core material, winding method, and filter and dc link capacitors are chosen to fulfill the main objective of this paper. Finally, an optimized 5 kW SiC based PFC is designed. Maximum measured efficiency of 99.1% at half of the nominal load is achieved and the full load efficiency is 99%. It is shown that the measured efficiency is substantially flat for a wide range of loads and it is above 99%.