Investigation of the possibility of energy saving in dc motor drive systems in the hellenic territory: Methodology & early results

In this paper a research work and its preliminary results exploring the possibility of saving energy in existing dc drive systems in Greece are presented. The purpose of this research is to develop a new motor drive system and its respective control technique to upgrade existing dc drive systems in order to save power and at the same time effectively control their speed and torque characteristics. In addition, the new high voltage low loss semiconductor switches relying on silicon carbide (SiC) are studied, and compared to the existing silicon (Si) semiconductor switches. Furthermore, the possibility of applying H_∞ or/and fuzzy logic theory to optimize the control of the dc drive system and the application of a reduced losses dc converter will be considered.