Medium Voltage Motor Drives Operation Testing by Electronic Dynamometers

This paper presents an modern configuration for the operation of regenerative electronic dynamometers in the industrial testing of newly manufactured medium voltage variable speed motor drives. The objective is to address the challenge of reducing acquisition, operation and maintenance costs by eliminating the need for a load motor, generator, grid-side rectifier and regenerative inverter. The proposed configuration implements regenerative power control within the Device Under Test (DUT) inverter control strategy. This approach only requires an L-type passive filter between the DUT and the electric power grid. Experimental results obtained with the Cascaded Half-Bridge converter (CHB) and Neutral Point Clamped converter (NPC) medium voltage variable speed drives are presented, demonstrating the effectiveness of the proposed configuration and control strategy in obtaining the desired results.