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Technical Lecture

Solid-State Transformers

T23.4 - Trade Study of Isolation Requirements and Magnetic Core Selection for Medium Frequency-Medium Voltage Transformers

Wednesday, March 19, 2025
2:30 PM – 2:50 PM ET
Location: Level Three, A314
There exists a significant emphasis on enabling a new generation of medium voltage and medium frequency solid state transformers for grid-tied applications including renewable integration and electric vehicle charging. Isolation requirements become a critical aspect of the transformer design in such cases, with a key design requirement being the winding-to-winding and core-to-winding spacing requirements. This paper explores the impacts of isolation requirements on medium frequency transformer designs with an emphasis on comparing nanocrystalline and ferrite core materials in such applications. We find that the leakage flux loss becomes a critical design parameter as isolation requirements become more stringent with larger isolation distances. To highlight this finding, a reluctance-based magnetic equivalent circuit of a single-phase shell type transformer constructed with two EE cores is used to estimate leakage flux and associated leakage loss. Experimental results populated from a 10 kHz shell type transformer design prototype are also utilized to validate the model and design methodology.