Auxiliary Inverter Configuration for Energy Efficiency Improvement and Cost Effectiveness of Electric Vehicle Inverter

Wide band gap (WBG) based power switches have improved the efficiency and power density in the power electronic systems. The higher cost compared to silicon switches is the road block for large scale adoption of SiC devices. In this thesis, a high efficient and cost effective inverter configuration for Electric Vehicle (EV) application is proposed where a WBG device based auxiliary inverter is used in parallel to Si-IGBT based main inverter. The auxiliary inverter assists the switching of main inverter to minimize the switching losses and at the same time to increase the cost effectiveness of the system. A detailed switching scheme is presented to achieve the mentioned features. Simulation analysis considering UDDS (City cycle) driving cycle is done to show the effectiveness of the WBG based auxiliary inverter in improving the energy efficiency of EVs.