Experimental Comparison of Losses in a Grid-connected and M2C-fed 11kW Induction Motor

Abstract: This thesis analyzes the power losses in induction machines and how the losses depend on the harmonic content of the applied voltages. Two cases are compared, one case where a machine is fed with a sinusoidial voltage and one case with a modular multilevel converter (M2C). The sine is representing an ideal grid while the M2C represents a case with harmonic content. The usage of converters for electrical drive systems is increasing due to advantages when the rotor speed could be variable by changing the frequency of the voltage. This is usually increasing the efficiency of the overall system, but is also adding harmonics fed to the machine and switching losses in the converter. Low switching losses in the inverter usually create higher harmonic content that instead increases the losses of the machine. The M2C is then proposed as a converter topology that can keep the harmonic content low while keeping the switching losses relatively low. This study focuses on the iron losses, the part of the total losses that is most hard to predict or measure. Today’s methods used to calculate the iron losses are often rough approximations that do not take the impact of the harmonic content of voltage into consideration, even though the iron losses are dependent on the harmonics. Experimental results in the study show that the losses of a M2C-fed case do not differ much from a sine-fed case. The difference could be explained by low increase of iron losses caused by the small harmonic content from the M2C. The increase of iron losses was linked to the harmonic content of the voltage.