Discrete State Event-Driven Method: A Novel Approach for Power Electronics Transient Simulation

Abstract: Simulation plays a critically important role in power electronics research and product development. In spite of the advance in computer hardware and software, however, there are still two significant challenges facing existing tools: Capability to accurately simulate switching transients of semiconductor devices in details in a large-scale system, and simulating a high-voltage high-power large-scale system at a reasonable speed. This tutorial reviews the current status and challenges of existing simulation tools, and presents the principle, effectiveness and applications of a novel simulation approach: The Discrete State Event-Driven (DSED) method. With the DSED method, device-level transients and system-level dynamics can be simulated with high accuracy and significantly shorter time as compared to other software. For example, for small-scale converters (e.g. 20 switches), the speed gain is up to 10 folds as compared to one leading software specialized in power electronics, and up to 100 folds as compared to Matlab/Simulink®. When a system is larger, the speed gain is more significant. For example, for large-scale converters (e.g. 600 switches), the speed gain is up to hundreds of folds as compared to the specialized software on the premise of the same accuracy. With the capability to simulate a large converter system accurately and at a very fast speed, DSED makes it possible to analyze and design a high-power converter more reliably and perform studies that are very difficult or impossible to do otherwise. Also, in this tutorial, the methodology of obtaining detailed device models from manufacturer datasheet and simple lab tests will be described.

Zhengming Zhao is a full professor at Tsinghua University. He was elected as IEEE Fellow in 2018 for contributions to electromagnetic transient analysis and control of high-voltage high-power electronics conversion. In recent years, he has been leading a research group focusing on transient simulation approach of power electronics, and DSED has been successfully developed as a powerful solution. He has published more than 10 SCI and EI papers and applied for 8 patents related to power electronic simulations.

Hua Jin is the founder and president of Powersim Inc., a leading provider of simulation and design tools for power electronics. Since its first release in 1994, their flagship product PSIM® has become a powerful simulation platform that offers comprehensive simulation and design capabilities for various applications.

Bochen Shi, Yicheng Zhu, Zhujun Yu and Jiahe Ju are the developers of DSED. They will present the technical principles and effectiveness of DSED on the tutorial.