Applicability Assessment of Power Electronic Transformer (PET) in Textile Applications

Abstract

Power electronic transformer (PET) has been the subject of extensive research in recent years due to its potential to replace 50-Hz transformers with advantageous characteristics such as reduced volume and weight, embedded fault protection, enhanced controllability, and bidirectional power flow. However, PET has not yet been successfully developed and implemented to a variety of field applications, making it an active area of research. Informed by this fact, the purpose of this paper is to evaluate the applicability of PET in textile applications while emphasizing the current problems of isolation transformers, such as harmonic effects, bulky size, and passivity, and how PET can solve these problems. PET can be an attractive replacement for the 50-Hz transformer in the above mentioned application by mitigating the drawbacks of the conventional 50-Hz transformer. In addition, challenges and current PET development trends are discussed.