Novel Boost Inverter Configuration and 3-ϕ Induction Motor Drive for Home Appliances

Abstract

3-φ induction motors (IM) are compact and efficient compared with 1-φ motors commonly used in home appliances. This paper explores the possibility of using a 3-φ IM for home appliances and proposes a novel boost inverter configuration to operate it from a low voltage source like PV or battery. The conventional 3-φ inverter with a boost converter is a widely used topology to operate the 3-φ IM from a voltage source of low magnitude. However, its efficiency goes down and the inductor size increases for low power applications (less than 500W), which is typically the case with home appliance motor drives. To address this issue, this paper presents and validates a novel inductor-less boost inverter configuration for 3-φ induction motor drive proposed to be used in home appliances. The proposed converter employs a switched capacitor network to boost the input voltage by two times without using an inductor. The proposed configuration incurs lower switching and conduction losses. Moreover, the current THD is improved and the total semiconductor requirement is also reduced. The proposed topology is compared with the conventional 3-φ inverter cascaded with a boost converter to show its various advantages. Simulation studies are carried out in MATLAB/SIMULINK platform in conjunction with PLECS block-set to validate the various claims. A thorough switching and conduction loss analysis is also carried out using the PLECS block-set.