New Industry Products

PC Software Configurator for Gate Drivers

March 13, 2016 by Power Pulse1595211359

Amantys Power Electronics Limited has today announced the launch of the Power Insight Configurator a Windows PC software tool that enables the design engineer to quickly and easily configure Amantys gate drivers to speed up the process of design and commissioning new converter power stacks. The Power Insight Configurator complements the Power Insight Adapter, an interface box that provides a physical interface to the gate drive.

Typically the converter power stack designer has needed to disassemble the converter power stack to desolder and replace gate resistors onto the gate drives to manage the rise and fall times of the IGBT, which can be a timely, laborious and error prone process. With the introduction of the Power Insight Configurator the time to make these changes can be reduced from hours to seconds. The need for a separate signal generator with optical output can also be avoided, as the Power Insight Configurator uses the Power Insight Adapter to generate double pulse waveforms simplifying the process of testing the converter power stack.

The Power Insight Configurator can also download diagnostic data from Amantys gate drivers in order to monitor the occurrence of events such as short circuits, clamps and under-voltage during the long term operation of the gate driver in the field. Amantys will be demonstrating the new Power Insight Configurator at next week’s IEEE Applied Power Electronics Conference in the Hitachi Booth.

Power Insight is a communications protocol that enables two way exchange of data over the isolation barrier in a high voltage inverter design. The communications protocol operates at the same time as the PWM and ACK pulses without interference. Establishing communication with the gate drive allows the gate driver to be configured in situ over the fibre optic link. Gate drivers from Amantys can be configured with up to fifteen different values for the turn on and turn off gate resistors as well as fault lock out times and two or three level mode selection. Custom feedback protocols can also be accommodated.

In order to further simplify testing Amantys has included a pulse generator in the software tool that can be used to generate double pulse test waveforms through the Power Insight Adapter interface box. Using a windows PC, the converter power stack designer can now generate double pulse tests and change the gate drive configuration without the need to touch the power stack. This is essential in a high voltage environment as it lowers the risk to the converter power stack designer of repeatedly entering a high voltage area. The converter power stack designer no longer needs to disassemble the converter power stack and desolder / solder in different gate resistors speeding up the turnaround time between tests from hours to seconds.

During field operation or long term tests the Amantys gate drives record faults for short circuit events, clamp events and under voltage events. The Power Insight Configurator simplifies the process of downloading the events into a text or comma separated value (CSV) file for offline analysis by a maintenance engineer or converter power stack designer.

The Power Insight Configurator will be included with the purchase of the Power Insight Adapter available from Amantys Power Electronics Ltd., and approved distributors.