AC drives: year 2000 (Y2K) and beyond

The unprecedented growth in industrial motor drives over the past decade resulted from the process improvements demanded by the automation industry. With the increased speed of modern micro-controllers and digital signal processors and the reduced insulated gate bipolar transistor (IGBT) drive package size, coupled with the low maintenance of AC motors, multiple machine configurability has been achieved with minimal process downtime. This progress required significant effort in mitigating numerous technical problems associated with this rapidly expanding technology. The paper reviews the economic trends in the industry, performance enhancements for volts per hertz (V/F) drives and high performance field oriented controllers (FOC), inverter hardware topologies, and IGBT induced system problems and solutions. Finally, the authors look beyond the year 2000 (Y2K) and offer a glimpse at what is possible and practical over the next five years.