Traction Inverters & Motor Drives
Testing traction inverters, motor control units, on-board chargers on bidirectional HV DC with regeneration. What you are proving is that the drive behaves across the whole DC input window, including regen.
- Device under test
- traction inverters, motor control units, on-board chargers
- Bus
- bidirectional HV DC with regeneration
- Who buys this
- powertrain and drive engineering teams
A drive regenerates, so the supply has to sink as readily as it sources. That single requirement eliminates most unidirectional bench supplies before any other spec matters.
Where programmes get caught out
The supply must sink as well as source
A regenerating drive pushes energy back. Unidirectional supplies are eliminated at this requirement, whatever else they offer.
Battery emulation beats a real pack on a line
An emulated source is repeatable, always at the state of charge you asked for, and does not need charging between units.
Ripple superposition is usually the gap
Meeting the voltage window is straightforward. Superimposing the specified ripple across it is where bench supplies fail.
Where the standards have moved
Revision status changes what your report has to cite. Every note below carries the record it came from, retrieved on the date shown.
AQG 324 is the automotive module qualification guideline — and it was written for silicon
The ECPE working group formed in June 2017 and released AQG 324 on 12 April 2018, building on the German LV 324. It defines a common procedure for characterisation, environmental and lifetime testing of power modules used in motor-vehicle converter units. The released version focuses on silicon-based modules; wide-bandgap coverage for SiC and GaN was scheduled for later versions. If your drive inverter uses SiC modules, the guideline your customer names and the guideline that actually covers your device may not be the same document.
Source: Automotive AQG 324 working group — ECPE (European Center for Power Electronics). Retrieved 2026-08-24.
The module-level stresses are bias-and-temperature endurance, not switching demos
A revised AQG 324 annex on SiC-based modules gives specific guidance on power cycling, high-temperature gate bias, high-temperature reverse bias and dynamic reverse bias. Each is a long hold at a fixed electrical condition rather than a short characterisation sweep, which is why the equipment question is duration stability and per-device monitoring rather than peak capability.
Source: Reliability and Standardization for SiC Power Devices — Donald A. Gajewski and colleagues, Materials Science Forum vol. 1092. Retrieved 2026-08-24.
Testing to a standard
The clause-by-clause limits, and what each standard deliberately says nothing about.
Equipment for this work
- PAS-F Regenerative AC Source / Grid Simulator45 kVA – 1.6 MVARegenerative three-phase utility grid simulator and bi-directional AC source — sources and sinks full DUT current, returning up to 92% of load energy to the grid instead of dissipating it in a parallel load bank.
- SM Series Programmable DC Power Supply1.5 kW – over 1 MW paralleledCompact programmable DC supplies from 1.5 kW to 15 kW per chassis, parallelable beyond 1 MW.
- B2C+ Bi-Directional DC Converter7.5 kW – over 1 MW paralleledBi-directional DC converter from 7.5 kW to 160 kW per chassis, parallelable beyond 1 MW — sources and sinks, so it suits battery and drive work where energy flows both ways.
- Procyon PTS 2100-20 Battery Test System5 kW – 480 kWScalable bi-directional charge/discharge battery test system — regenerative power stage at better than 93% efficiency, configurable from a desktop unit up to a full test floor.
Specifying a bench for ev-drive?
Send the clause you have to satisfy rather than a shopping list. An engineer will tell you what the rig has to do — including the parts of the programme this equipment does not cover.
Request a quote