Amantys announced the launch of a new Insulated Gate Bipolar Transistor (IGBT) Gate Driver operating at 3.3 kV, 4.5 kV and 6.5 kV, with significantly improved reliability and protection in high power modules targeting the most demanding applications, including wind turbines, locomotive, HVDC and industrial drives.
The product family is unique in offering a range of innovative protection mechanisms vital for these high power applications, combined with Amantys Power Insight in plug and play format.
At these power levels the gate driver must provide reliable and effective protection mechanisms for a variety of fault conditions. This 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 3300 V up to 6500 V and is configurable for industry standard 190 mm x 130 mm high isolation power modules from manufacturers including ABB, Dynex, Hitachi, Infineon, and Mitsubishi.
