Amantys Power Drive extends protection capabilities for high power modules
Amantys has announced the launch of a new Insulated Gate Bipolar Transistor (IGBT) Gate Driver operating at 3.3kV, 4.5kV and 6.5kV, with significantly improved reliability and protection in high power modules targeting the most demanding applications including wind turbines, locomotive, HVDC and industrial drives.
This new Amantys gate drive is being launched at PCIM Europe 2014 in Nuremberg, Germany from the 20-22 May.
The product family offers a range of innovative protection mechanisms vital for these high power applications, combined with Amantys Power Insight in a "˜plug and play' format.
At these power levels the gate driver must provide reliable and effective protection mechanisms for a variety of fault conditions. The new Amantys IGBT gate driver includes a variety of detection mechanisms for different short circuit types including a multi-threshold, programmable comparator which can identify slowly increasing fault currents, a fault mechanism which is not commonly detected in commercially available "plug and play" gate drivers. Once a fault is detected the driver is designed to implement a controlled switch off of the IGBT avoiding the potential for damaging voltage spikes.
This gate driver also includes the Amantys Power Insight condition monitoring and configuration capability to observe and report on critical power switching characteristics as well as enabling in-system configuration of the driver. Designed for the "intelligent control of power", the Amantys Power Drive is fully integrated and can measure and export critical performance parameters during operation as well as allowing configuration over the existing optical PWM and fault interfaces. These capabilities greatly simplify the design-in process.
The new Amantys Power Drive gate drive operates at voltages from 3300V up to 6500V and is configurable for industry standard 190mm x 130mm high isolation power modules from manufacturers including ABB, Dynex, Hitachi, Infineon, and Mitsubishi.
Commenting on this announcement, Steve Evans, VP of Marketing at Amantys said: "With its extensive protection capabilities, this series of IGBT gate drivers enable customers to design increasingly capable protection into their system, making their products more reliable and resilient than ever. In addition the Amantys Power Insight capability provides the unique capability to observe and tune system performance at each stage of development, as well as through equipment commissioning and into operation.
"Today's global launch of the new high voltage range of IGBT Gate Drivers gives our new global distribution partners an even broader range of IGBT Drivers "“ the only family of gate drives to include Amantys Power Insight for IGBT Modules from 1.2kV to 6.5kV. There is already significant interest in this product for applications including wind turbine inverters, industrial drives, HVDC transmission and locomotive traction inverters."
