Medium-Voltage Drives: Challenges and existing technology

This article presents an overview of state-of-art solutions, advances, and design and research trends in medium-voltage (MV) drive technologies-and also discusses the challenges and requirements associated with the use of such drives. The choice and deployment of MV drives in industries are associated with numerous requirements related to the front-end converter (grid side) and inverter (machine side). The focus is on solutions that present high efficiency; low price, size, and weight; minimum harmonic distortion; reduction in dv/dt; mitigation of common-mode (CM) voltage; avoiding torsional vibration; transformerless solutions; fault detection capability; and condition monitoring.