Power Electronics for Wind Turbines

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Power Electronics for Wind Turbines

SEMIKRON’s portfolio includes a wide range of products for wind energy applications, from small to medium power modules for pitch and yaw drives to high power components for multi-megawatt power converters. From individual modules including dedicated drivers to high power SKiiP 4 IPMs and ready-to-use power electronic stacks – SEMIKRON has the solution.

Reliable spare parts are becoming increasingly important to ensure continuous energy harvesting until the end of the turbine life. SEMIKRON has a broad portfolio of products to ensure reliable operation and maintenance for wind turbine converters.

SEMIKRON products offer maximum reliability for on- and offshore wind turbines both in industry standard packages and in high power SKiiP 4 IPMs and power electronic stacks.

Performance Range

Operation & Maintenance

Wind Turbine O&M

 

Today, over 400,000 wind turbines are in operation in the field worldwide. The demand for reliable spare parts to ensure continuous energy harvesting until the end of the turbine life is becoming increasingly important. SEMIKRON has a broad portfolio of products to ensure reliable operation and maintenance for wind turbine converters. From individual power modules, IPMs and drivers to dedicated, customized retrofit stacks – SEMIKRON has the right solution!

Benefits

SEMIKRON offers a broad portfolio with industry standard power modules such as the SEMITRANS and SEMiX family. It includes SKiiP IPMs, also with customized coolers to fit into your wind turbine converter. The range is rounded off with highly reliable stacks, for example, based on solder-free SKiM 93 modules featuring sintered chips. This technology allows for optimised thermal conductivity from chip to heatsink and runs the chip at about 20°C lower than the OEM stack. SEMIKRON also offers newly designed driver boards based on the latest SEMIKRON ASIC technology with digital signal transmission and additional protection functions.

Key Features

  • Broad portfolio of industry standard modules
  • SEMIKRON advanced power modules for maximum reliability and efficiency
  • Customized stacks for dedicated wind turbine converters
  • Customized heatsinks for IPMs (SKiiP) for integration into existing converter designs
  • Drivers and adapter boards with highly reliable SEMIKRON ASIC technology

More about Wind Turbine Operation & Maintenance

Operation and Maintenance – Power Electronics for Wind Turbines

New Benchmark Generation 7 IGBT

Pushing Performance in 3-Level Topologies

 

Whenever power quality and efficiency are driving factors in power electronics applications, 3-level topologies are the key. This is especially true for renewable energy applications where the combination with the latest Generation 7 IGBTs sets new benchmarks.

SEMITRANS 10 MLI enables wind turbine converters to reach voltage ranges up to 1000VAC (1500VDC) in 3-level NPC topology and increases converter efficiency.

For ANPC topologies, SEMIKRON’s new SEMITRANS 20 power module combines lowest stray inductance, highest power density and latest Generation 7 IGBTs to set a new benchmark. Its design based on standard half-bridge topology allows an easy ANPC setup and a low inductance DC-link connection.

Key Features

  • Reduced system cost thanks to 3-level topology
  • Up to 1.5MW without paralleling
  • Lower switching losses thanks to 1200V IGBT
  • Generation 7 IGBTs
  • Lower THD means lower filter requirements
  • Reduced cable diameters or cable losses
  • Reduced cooling requirements

More about IGBT Generation 7

3-Level Modules for Multimegawatt Converters – Power Electronics for Wind Turbines

IGBT Modules

Product Portfolio

 

SEMITOP® E1/E2

Exceeding the standard for superior performance

MiniSKiiP®

Scalable without compromise

SEMiX® 6 Press-Fit

The complete press-fit standard

SEMiX® 3 Press-Fit

For solder-free mounting with press-fit contacts

SEMITRANS® 10

Robust high power modules

SEMITRANS® 20

The new standard in high power

Intelligent Power Modules – IPMs

For Maximum Reliability

 

The SKiiP IPM product line sets a benchmark for high performance and robust inverter designs. Both SKiiP 3 and SKiiP 4 feature high power densities combined with flexible cooling options such as air or water cooling, also with customized heatsinks. Reliable driver technology, integrated current sensors and comprehensive protection functions complete the IPM design.

The IPMs of SKiiP 3 platform have propagated widely through the industrial drive segment. With sixpack or half-bridge topologies, it covers a IGBT nominal current range from 500A up to 2400A.

The SKiiP 4 platform products, available in half-bridge topology, cover the highe power range up to 3600A IGBT nominal current. It has been optimized for highest power cycling requirements.

To ensure highest reliability and service life, the SKiiP 4 power circuitry is 100% solder-free. Sinter technology as die attach replaces the solder layers between semiconductor chips and DCB, which usually causes the limitation in lifetime. Hence, sintering improves power and thermal cycling capability.

The integrated gate driver in the SKiiP 4 has set new standards in terms of reliability and enhanced functionality through its CAN interface. The digital driver guarantees safe isolation between the primary and secondary side for both switching signals and parameter measurement. The CAN interface allows setting the SKiiP 4 configuration parameter and reading application parameter.

High performance cooling (HPC) technology has been new introduced providing approximately 25% more output capability compared to standard water cooling. A double side mounting HPC water cooler is also available and enables an even higher power density.

Key Features

  • 1200V and 1700V IGBTs
  • Half-bridge and sixpack topology
  • 500A to 3600A IGBT nominal current
  • Flexible cooling options: air, water or customized cooling options,  SKiiP 4 high performance water cooling for single and double-sided SKiiP mounting  
  • Paralleled operation for even higher output power possible
More about SkiiP

Power Electronic Stack Platforms

Fully Qualified Inverter Assemblies Tailored to Your Specific Needs

Standard Stacks

SEMIKRON’s Power Electronic Stacks enable our customers to succeed in dynamic markets and meet any global challenge. We deliver diode-, thyristor-, IGBT- and SiC-MOSFET-based stacks for AC voltages from 380V to 1000V. Our standard stacks cover an output current range from 70A to 1400A. Our new SEMIKUBE MLI Stacks bring all benefits of 3-level NPC topology in an off-the-shelf product. The integrated safety and sensing fuctions are advantageous for your fast time-to-market.

More about Power Electronic Stacks

Customised Stacks

In addition to standard stacks, SEMIKRON has vast experience in developing customer-specific solutions. Engineers are available in our stack centres around the globe to offer such solutions by adapting existing platforms or designing customized stacks.

Four Key Factors for your success

  • Shortest time to market
  • Cost savings in R&D, production and qualification
  • Global SEMIKRON stack production footprint
  • Highly experienced engineering team
More about Customised Stacks
IGBT Driver

Product Portfolio IGBT Driver

Above the Standard

SEMIKRON’s unique product portfolio enables access to all established industries with a one-stop solution that combines state-of-the-art power modules and driver electronics.

SEMIKRON’s IGBT drivers are available as one- or two channel driver boards, two-channel driver cores for PCB-Integration, suitable for any standard semiconductor power module or as Plug-and-Play solutions, which perfectly fit the SEMiX 3 Press-Fit, SEMITRANS 10 and compatible modules.

Cost Efficient

Achieve outstanding system compactness and create space-and cost-effective inverter designs with SEMIKRON’s drivers, utilizing highly integrated ASIC technology. Isolated DC-link voltage and temperature sensor signals at the driver’s interface along with over-voltage and over-temperature lockout also help to reduce system costs significantly.

Time Efficient

More than 25 years of experience in developing innovative IGBT driver electronics enables SEMIKRON to have a short-term solution for almost every challenge related to driver electronics. SEMIKRON’s Plug-and-Play drivers connect directly to most common standard IGBT modules. The IGBT driver cores fit with SEMIKRON’s adapter boards or application sample PCBs. For the latter, SEMIKRON shares the entire manufacturing data to decrease development time, speeding up the time-to-market.

Reliable

SEMIKRON’s SKYPER and SKHI drivers are well-known, highly robust and reliable IGBT driver solutions, even under demanding environmental conditions.

Over many years of field operation experience the proprietary IGBT driver technology has been relentlessly developed further. This technology sets new standards for the essential features of safe gate control, reliable protection and reinforced insulation.

Key Factors

  • Reinforced insulation for signal and power transmission
  • One- and two-channel driver
  • Up to 1700V transient collector-emmitter voltage
  • Up to 1500V continuous DC link voltage
  • 8Apk to 35Apk output current per channel
  • 1W to 4.2W peak output power per channel
  • Suitable for multi-level topologies and Generation 7 IGBT

Driver Cores

Plug-and-Play Driver

Driver boards, adapter Boards and Application Samples

Thermal Interface Materials (TIM)

Stay Cool – Heat Dissipation is Our Job

 

SEMIKRON was the first power module manufacturer on the market to offer power modules with pre-applied thermal interface material in thermal paste form. With more than two decades of field experience and more than 17 million pre-printed modules in the field, benchmarks are being set. The modules with pre-applied TIM are printed in a clean environment on an automated and SPC controlled silkscreen and stencil printing line.

For each requirement, SEMIKRON offers the right choice of material. In addition to the standard silicone thermal grease, phase change materials and high performance thermal paste with improved thermal performance are also available.

SEMIKRON offers either thermal grease or phase change materials depending on customer requirements (e.g. performance increase, reduced handling effort) and module type (with or without baseplate). Phase change materials have a solid consistency at room temperature, fully exploiting the advantages a non-smearing TIM layer offers, with no drawbacks. Baseplate-less modules, on the other hand, usually require a lower-viscosity material to help improve robustness during assembly. Here, thermal grease is the preferred solution.

Key Features

  • Increased productivity thanks to reduced handling costs and improved logistics
  • Low thermal resistance with optimized TIM layer thickness
  • Improved lifetime and reliability
  • Improved assembly robustness
  • Modules can be shipped directly to the assembly line without any additional treatment processes
  • Lower overall costs

Portfolio

More about Thermal Interface Materials