THYRISTOR SELF-SUPPLIED GATE DRIVE FOR MEDIUM-VOLTAGE

CONVERTER RECTIFIER WITH REDUCTION OF SPARE PARTS FOR

FIRING
Fernando Albert Eleutério(1)
Braz de Jesus Cardoso Filho(2)
Manoel Eustáquio dos Santos(1)
(1)
Gerdau Açominas – Ouro Branco – Minas Gerais – Brasil
(2)
Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais – Belo Horizonte – Minas Gerais – Brasil
[email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]

Abstract – It will be proposed the development of undesirable firing. The logical circuit and the command of
control for thyristor self-supplied gate drive for medium- control pulses were constituted for many active components
voltage converter rectifier. It shall be presented a and were placed in the same board of gate drive. The
topology intended to minimize the circuit spare parts inclusion of too many components turns the system more
keeping the characteristics of firing control and thyristor complex and too big, depending on the amount of thyristors
state detection on conduction and blocking. To evaluate to be used. Also it’s used breakover diodes to promote the
the circuit performance it will be presented simulation protection against undesirable firing caused by over-voltage
and experimental results. across the power switches.
A similar solution was adopted by BBC [5]. This solution
Index Terms — Self-supplied gate drive, medium voltage, had protection against firing caused by high voltages, high
power converters. dV/dt during the recovery time, switch state detection on
conduction / blocking and short-circuit fault. The principle
I. INTRODUCTION operation is similar to that presented in [2–4] with the use of
breakover diodes to fire the thyristor when the voltage
The power thyristors have had a rapid commercial
exceeds the breakover voltage, only presented in [4].
acceptance in power control applications since the 50s.
In this study it will be adopted the topology proposed in
Nowadays those switches are normally employed in
[2–3], but it will be emphasized the reduction of spare parts
rectifying circuits that demand DC link voltage control and
components [4] for firing power thyristors. The evaluation of
solid state for starting of AC motors. Due to increasing
its performance will be done through simulation and
demand for high power applications, since the end of the 70s,
experimental results.
it has been showed a concerning for solid state switches
capable of blocking high voltage levels. In the case of power
thyristors, in two decades the blocking voltage level was
increased by twice and, nowadays, it’s approximately equal II. SELF-SUPPLIED GATE DRIVES WITH COMPONENT
to 8 kV [1]. REDUCTION
In the case of frequency inverters, it has been noted an
increasing demand for AC motor drives in medium voltage The self-supplied gate drives use the current that flows
applications. However, the demand for insulated sources through the snubber circuit to store energy in capacitors. The
with high voltage level for gate drives energy supplying has main function of snubber circuit is employed to reduce the
been an inconvenient to use medium voltage switches. A switching losses and provide protection against over-voltage
solution that has been adopted is based on gate drive circuits which may cause undesirable firing [6]. A simple snubber
that use energy provided through the snubber circuit and circuit consists of an arrangement of series connected
stored in capacitors. This eliminates the needs for insulated resistors and capacitors, which are connected in parallel to
sources and reduces, considerably, the volume and cost of the thyristors.
medium voltage applications. At the time instant when the thyristor is switched off, its
In [2–3] it’s presented a self-supplied gate drive applied to conduction current is deviated to the snubber capacitor
thyristors used on a single-phase controlled rectifier and a through the snubber resistor. This will charge the snubber
solid-state starter, both in medium voltage, but do not present capacitor. During the thyristor switch on, the energy that was
the control circuit. This gate drive uses the current that flows stored at the capacitor is dissipated as heat on the resistor. To
through the snubber circuit and store energy in capacitors use the high voltage across the thyristor it has been
eliminating the necessity of insulated supply sources. developed self-supplied gate drives that use capacitors as
This same solution was used in [4], but including some energy storage elements.
electronic components on power circuit. The principle
operation of the power circuit is the same as proposed in [2–
3]. However, it’s emphasized both the logical circuit, the
command of control pulses and the protection against
 , where:
Vsource is the voltage across the snubber capacitor;
Vcg is the voltage variation across the storage capacitor.

So for Cg = 470µF and Valim = 311Vp-p, the voltage

variation across Cg has a ripple approximately equal to
0,4Vp-p.
The equivalent snubber capacitance is calculated in (2).
To guarantee the snubber circuit performance, Cg has to be
much greater than Csnu.

C snu ⋅ C g
Cequiv = (2)
C snu + C g
Fig. 1 – Firing power circuit – FPC

B. Logical Circuit
Rsnu Rsnu
The logical circuit have function of a simple firing
Csnu Csnu switch. It only receive the command pulses of an external
circuit through optical fiber receiver, FO1. At this way, the
SCRa
Dz
+ generation and control of command pulses are done
Cg
Cg externally by a control board, what reduces the amount of
active components in the logical circuit, as shown in Fig. 3.
Consequently the charge consumption will be reduced, since
a) this active components use the same energy stored at
b)
capacitor Cg.
The monitoring of the thyristor operation state is done
Rsnu through the comparison between the voltage across the gate
resistor Rgate and the voltage across the diode Dmed, both
Csnu Cg shown in Fig. 3. When the thyristor is fired by the pulsed
signal, the voltage waveform across the gate resistor Rgate
shows average and oscillating components . The average
D1
value is approximately equal to 0.7V, which represents the
voltage across gate-cathode. Due to this particularity, it’s
c) d) proposed the state operation monitoring by this signal
Fig. 2 – Current flow of gate drive through an optical fiber FO2. Thus this signal will be
processed by the board that generates the firing signals. In
this board it will be determined if the thyristor is conducting
A. Firing Power Circuit – FPC or blocked.

The power circuit based in [2–3] is presented in Fig. 1.

During the thyristor switching off, the current flows through
the snubber capacitor and storage capacitor Cg up to the
moment that the voltage across Cg is higher than the Dz zener
diode breakdown voltage, Fig. 2(b). During the negative
semi-cycle the current flows through the snubber circuit by
diode D1, Fig. 2(c). When it’s applied a command to switch
on the thyristor, the energy stored at capacitor Cg will supply
the gate drive system, Fig. 2(d).
The snubber dimensioning is done through the balance
between the charge stored at the storage capacitor and the
charge used by the thyristor switching. This balance is
presented at (1). Fig. 3 – Logical circuit and thyristor state detection on conduction
and blocking
C snu ⋅Vsource = C g ⋅Vcg (1)
 This method is implemented through a short-circuit on
the DC link and on the blocking of the thyristors gate pulses
of the rectifier bridge when the di/dt limiting circuit detects a
current greater than that specified.
Each switch of the rectifier bridge is built through a series
arrangement of three thyristors as shown in Fig. 4. The
thyristors to be used in the bridge are the Aegis
Semiconductors A5N:300.18H. For this application, the
thyristor state detection circuit will not be present in the gate
drive, but instead the state detection will be performed by the
evaluation of the DC link voltage. This strategy reduces the
amount of components the on the gate drive.

IV. RESULTS AND ANALYSIS

As case study, it will be shown the simulation and

experimental results of a thyristor connected in series with a
resistive load in low voltage, as can be seen in Fig. 5. The
Fig. 4 – 12 pulses rectifier bridge, with 3 thyristors in series
Fig. 6(a) was obtained through simulation and shows that the
voltage across the storage capacitor takes, approximately,
At thyristor turn on, it will be sent a continuous signal
145ms to reach the zener diode breakdown voltage. This
during all conduction cycle by FO2. When the thyristor do
same result is observed at the experimental curve shown at
not turn on, although it has been generated a firing command,
Fig. 6(b). After this time, the gate drive is ready to operate.
the signal to be sent by FO2 it will be the same command
signal generated by control board, in other words, the pulsed
signal.
This strategy reduces spare parts of active components
that are needed to evaluate the thyristor state, which in turn
reduces the charge that would be drained by gate drive. Thus
the firing / control routine will be embedded on the board
that commands the thyristor firing pulses.

III. RECTIFIER BRIDGE FOR THE MEDIUM VOLTAGE

INVERTER

The objective of the self-supplied gate circuit is the

development of a 12 pulses rectifier bridges to supply the DC
link of a neutral clamped medium voltage inverter. As shown
in [7], it will be used a rectifier bridge provided with a
protection scheme that blocks the thyristor gate pulses, which
is called PSP. This protection scheme shown to be more a)
efficient than the classical solutions based on fuses,
protection IGCT’s and crowbar circuits.

Gate
drive

b)
Fig. 6 – Voltage across the storage capacitor: a) Simulation, b)
Fig. 5 – Test circuit Experimental
 Fig. 7 – Current through the snubber circuit and storage capacitor Fig. 9 – Voltage variation across the storage capacitor and gate
(simulation) current (simulation)

The current in the snubber circuit and storage capacitor is Since in the study related to the half-cycle controlled
presented at Fig. 7. As observed at this figure, the current rectifier the simulation results were verified experimentally,
through the storage capacitor is the same observed at the it will be presented only simulation results concerned to a 12
snubber circuit during the positive half cycle. This happens pulses controlled rectified with line voltage equal to 2200V.
until the capacitor is charged and the reaches the maximum The storage capacitor voltage takes approximately 170ms
voltage of the zener diode, Dz. to reach the zener diode maximum voltage, as can be seen at
Fig. 8 presents the voltage through the storage capacitor Fig. 11. The gate current and the storage capacitor voltage
and the gate current. As can be seen in this figure and also in observed during the conduction state of the thyristor is
details at Fig. 9, at steady state, the voltage across the storage presented at Figs. 12(a) and (b). The average value of the
capacitor reaches a medium value equal to 2.7 V with a storage capacitor voltage is approximately 3.5V, what is
ripple equal to 0.4 V. Fig. 8 also shows that the voltage reached when the energy provided by the snubber circuit is
capacitor transient time lasts 200ms, which is determined by equal to the energy demanded by the gate drive.
the time constant related to the association between the
snubber and storage capacitors and the snubber resistance.
Figs. 10(a) and (b) show the voltages across the load
resistor Rload and gate resistor Rgate. Those figures indicate the
gate drive is firing the thyristor .

a)
Voltage across the gate resistor, Rgate

Fig. 8 – Voltage across the storage capacitor and gate current

(simulation)
Voltage across the load resistor, Rload

b)
Fig. 10 – Voltages across the load resistor, Rload, and gate resistor,
Rgate (experimental)
As can be seen, the waveforms presented at Figs. 12(a) and IV. CONCLUSIONS
(b) are similar to those presented at Fig. 8, whose were
obtained for the test circuit presented at Fig. 5. It was proposed a gate drive with reduce spare parts to
build the firing switch.
The circuit performance was evaluated by experimental
results obtained from a single thyristor operating at low
voltage and by simulation results related to a 12 pulses
rectifier bridge.

REFERENCES

[1] B. J. Baliga, Power Semiconductor Devices, PWS

Publishing Company, 1995.
[2] D. M. Raonic, “SCR Self-Supplied Gate Driver for
Medium-Voltage Application with Capacitor as Storage
Element”, IEEE Transactions on Industry Applications,
Vol. 36, pp. 212-216, No. 1, January/February 2000.
[3] D. Raonic, D. MacLennan, and D. Rouaud, “Some
experience with SCR’s self powered gate driver system
Fig. 11 – Voltage across the storage capacitor for 12 pulses
for medium voltage solid state starter”, in Proc.
controlled rectified bridge (simulation)
CCECE’97, St. Johns, Nfld., Canada, May 1997, pp.556-
559.
[4] J. Zhang, R. Ding e H. Song, “A New Reliable Supplied
Gate Drive Circuit for SCRs with Breakover Diodes for
Protection”, ISCAS 2004, pp. 972-975.
[5] U. Aström, B. Danielsson e K. Nyberg, “Alternative
Solutions for Thyristor Control and Gating for HVDC-
valves”, ABB.
[6] N. Mohan, T. M. Underland, W. P. Robbins, Power
Electronics: Converters, Applications, and Design, Ed.
John Wiley & Sons.
[7] M. E. Santos, Análise e Projeto de um Inversor Trifásico
para Aplicações em Médias Tensões Industriais, Tese de
Doutorado, Programa de Pós-Graduação em Engenharia
Elétrica, UFMG, 2004.

Fig. 12 – Voltage across the storage capacitor and gate current for
12 pulses controlled rectifier bridge (simulation)