Grid-tied operation of current source inverter with hybrid SiC and Si semiconductor switches

This paper proposes a current source inverter (CSI) with additional Silicon Carbide (SiC) switches and traditional silicon-based inverter bridge. A grid-tied operational principle has been proposed, which can significantly reduce the switching counts and meanwhile realize the zero current switching (ZCS) for the rear-end CSI circuitry. The proposed current source inverter could employ the superior characteristics of SiC switch to guarantee the high performance and high efficiency with a smaller DC inductor. To some extent, the current source inverter circuitry could be a universal solution for all CSI systems. Matlab simulations and experimental verifications have been presented to show the performance of the proposed inverter.