A Review of Mitigation Methods for Overvoltage in

Long-Cable-Fed PWM AC Drives

Jiangbiao He
Student Member, IEEE

Gennadi Y. Sizov

Peng Zhang

Student Member, IEEE

Nabeel A.O. Demerdash

Student Member, IEEE

Life Fellow, IEEE

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering

Marquette University
Milwaukee, WI 53233, USA
jiangbiao@ieee.org
AbstractThe phenomenon of overvoltage at motor terminals
in long-cable-fed PWM AC drives poses a severe stress on
motor insulation systems. The overvoltage is typically caused
by the high change rate of the inverter output voltage ( / )
and the surge impedance mismatch between the inverter,
connecting power cable and the motor. This paper presents a
comparative survey of the existing methods of overvoltage
suppression, which includes passive filters at both motor
terminals and inverter terminals. The design methodologies,
effectiveness, and practical applicability of these passive filters
are discussed through computer simulations based on
Ansys/Simplorer 9.0, and the promising approaches are
recommended for researchers and industrial users.

I.

INTRODUCTION

One of the remarkable advancements in power switching

devices has been the increasing speeds of switching and
related switching frequencies, in addition to the associated
high-frequency operation of PWM AC drives. This results in
a more sinusoidal motor current waveform with less ripple,
less copper losses, and less switching losses. However, the
consequent high rate of voltage rise,
/ , has adverse
effects on motor insulation systems and contributes to
bearing current problems [1]-[4]. Moreover, in some
industrial applications, constraints are such that the motor
and the PWM inverter have to be placed at separate locations,
thus long interconnecting cables are often required between
them. As presented in [1], narrow PWM pulses traveling on
long cables from the inverter to the motor behave like
traveling waves on transmission lines, in which a
phenomenon of voltage reflection and possibly successive
voltage reflection leading to overvoltage at the motor
terminals will occur. Actually, the associated voltage
reflection is a function of the inverter output pulse rise time,
and the length of the motor cables as well as the surge
impedances of the motor and cable systems [3], [4]. If the
pulses take longer than one-third the rise time to travel from
the inverter to the motor, then a full reflection will occur at
the motor terminals and the pulse amplitude will
approximately double [5]. In this case, if no mitigation
measures are implemented, the motor would likely suffer

from serious insulation damage leading ultimately to failure.

Additionally, NEMA has suggested that
/
be limited
to less than 500 / for general-purpose motors in the
460V class [6].
Accordingly, this paper presents a survey of the state-ofthe-art methods for overvoltage suppression caused by such
high
/
and surge impedance mismatch in PWM AC
drives. The paper aims at providing an encompassing
reference for industrial users to select the most appropriate
mitigation technique.
Section II analyzes the cause of overvoltage at motor
terminals. Section III gives the detailed review of passive
filters at motor terminals and inverter terminals. Simulation
results of these passive filters are discussed and compared in
Section IV. Finally, conclusions are presented in Section V.
II.

Overvoltages at motor terminals are determined by three

main aspects, namely, the rise time of the PWM pulses, the
cable length, and the impedance mismatch between the
inverter, power cable, and the motor. Most often, the cable
length interconnecting the power converter and the motor is
dictated by the specific layout of an industry installation and
therefore we may have no choice in this matter, thus, what
we can mitigate or compensate for is the impedance
mismatch and the rise time of the inverter output pulses,
which determine two categories of mitigation methods for
overvoltage in long-cable-fed PWM AC drives.
A. Impedance mismatch
Surge impedance mismatch between the inverter, power
cable, and the motor is the most direct reason leading to
voltage reflection at the motor terminals. The reflected
voltage that is superposed on the motor terminal is the
incident dc-link voltage multiplied by the reflection
coefficients at the motor terminal, , and at the inverter
terminal, , respectively, which can be defined as [3]:

The work was partially supported by NSF under grant No. 1028348.

978-1-4577-0541-0/11/$26.00 2011 IEEE

ANALYSIS OF OVERVOLTAGE AT MOTOR TERMINALS

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M =

(1)

S =

where, Z is the motor surge impedance, Z , is the surge

impedance of the voltage source inverter (typically Z
0),
and Z is the cable surge impedance given by [3]:
Z =

+V , for

VLL, = V M +V ,

for

(7)

where, V and t represent the dc-bus voltage and rise

time of PWM pulses respectively.
Then, for a longer rise time of PWM pulses, (i.e., t
the normalized peak voltage can be expressed as

(9)

(10)

To verify this conclusion, a simulation of a 5-hp 460-V

induction motor drive system based on Simplorer 9.0 was
conducted here, and the simulation schematic was shown in
Fig.1. Assuming the cable length is =50m feeding an
induction motor with M 0.9 (typical value for motors of
less than 20 hp). The parameters of the cable are shown in
Table I, hence can be computed as follows:
=

1
0.34

= 1.27

),

181

10
10

10

(11)

Accordingly,
M

t =

(6)

(8)

=0.2

t =

(5)

As stated in [7], the forward-travelling inverter output

pulses will be reflected at the motor terminals after
propagation delay, t , and then the resulting backwardtraveling wave, which is a function of M , moving toward
the inverter, will also be reflected at the inverter terminals in
the same manner. Hence, after the PWM pulses has travelled
the cable length three times, the peak voltage, VLL, , can be
shown to be [7]:
M

+1

Thus, if 20% overshoot is the maximum overvoltage allowed

at the motor terminals, it follows that, the critical rise time of
the PWM pulses can be calculated as

(4)

where is the cable length, and is the pulse propagation

velocity in the motor cable and is given by [2]:

(3)

B. Rise time of PWM pulses

According to wave propagation theory and voltage
reflection analysis, a propagation delay for the inverter
output PWM pulses to travel from the inverter terminals to
the motor terminals can be expressed as

where, L , is the cable inductance per unit length, and C , is

the cable capacitance per unit length. Generally, if Z
0, it follows that, S
1, and the overvoltage magnitude is
primarily determined by M .

VLL, =

VLL,

(2)

.
.

= 5.31 s

(12)

Fig.2 shows the normalized line voltages at the inverter

terminals and motor terminals with different rise time of
PWM pulses. It demonstrates that the voltage amplitude at
the motor terminals sensitively changes with the rise time of
PWM pulses. At rise time, t = 0.1s, the voltage overshoot
of the motor terminal reaches as high as 85% of the inverter
terminal voltage. However, at a critical time, t = 5.31s,
the voltage overshoot of the motor terminal is close to 20%
of the inverter terminal voltage. At rise time, t = 6s, the
motor terminal voltage is almost equal to the inverter
terminal voltage. These simulation results indicate that the
overvoltage at the motor terminals can be mitigated by
increasing the rise time of the inverter output pulses, such as
through the use of / flattening filters.

Figure 1. Simulation schematic of a 5-hp 460-V induction motor drives with 50m cable interconnecting the inverter and the motor.

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TABLE I.

CABLE PER-METER PARAMETERS

Rsline resistance

Ls (self-inductance)

Lm (mutual inductance)

Cg (line-to-ground capacitance)

Cm (line-to-line capacitance)

12.96 m/m

18.69 H/m

18.35 H/m

181 pF/m

32.5 pF/m

the inverter cabinet, because of the lack of accessibility for

installing such devices at the motor terminals. The following
subsections will elaborate the common passive filters both at
the motor terminals and at inverter terminals.
A. RC filter at the motor terminal
To match the surge impedance of the cable and provide
proper level of damping to control the voltage overshoot, an
RC filter, as shown in Fig.3, has been proposed in [9], [10].
(a)

Figure 3. RC filter at the motor terminal.

The equivalent impedance of the first-order RC filter

should be closely matched with the cable surge impedance as
given in (13):

(b)

=Z =

and
where
respectively.

(13)

are the filter resistance and capacitance,

should be designed to provide an

Moreover,
overdamped circuit to ensure the minimization of the
overvoltage at the motor terminals, as given in (14):

(c)
Figure 2. Normalized line-to-line voltages at the inverter terminals and
the motor terminals with (a) t = 0.1s, (b) t = 5.31s, (c) t = 6s.

III.

PASSIVE FILTERS TOPOLOGIES

where

From the point of view of flattening / of the PWM

pulses, there are mainly two mitigation methods: one is using
active filters, but this method is seldom employed in
industrial motor drives since additional switches and
complex algorithms are required. In the other approach, one
uses passive filters based on resistors, inductors and
capacitors. The latter one is much more popular because of
its simplicity and availability.
Passive filters, such as RC and RLC filters, have been
proposed to be installed at the motor terminals to match the
surge impedance of the cable, which could significantly
attenuate the overvoltage at the motor terminals. On the other
hand, for some special applications, such as submarine
situations or deep well pumps, filters have to be installed at

(14)

is the lumped parameter cable inductance.

The parameters of the LC filter can be determined from

the solution of (13) and (14).
B. RLC filter at the motor terminal
Similarly, a second-order RLC filter, as shown in Fig.4,
has also been proposed to suppress the overvoltage at the
motor terminals [5], [10], [11]. The filter parameters are
selected such that the equivalent impedance of the filter
closely matches the surge impedance of the cable. Therefore,
one can write:

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=
=

+
+

(15)

Here, the magnitude of

should be equal to the cable
surge impedance, Z , accordingly, from (15), one can write:
Z =

(16)

Again, the resistor R is designed to result in an over

damped circuit, thus:
R

LC
C

reason, these filters are often designed with a resonant

frequency significantly below the switching frequency, and
above the output fundamental frequency to avoid resonance
with the load, as expressed in (18):

(17)

Since a cables surge impedance (characteristic

impedance), Z , is independent of the cable length, it follows
that, the filter design should be the same for a given cable
regardless of the cable length.

(18)

where,
(19)
Here,
,
, and , are the filter resonance frequency,
switching frequency, and fundamental frequency of the
drives output voltage, respectively.

In addition, according to [5], it is recommended that, the

resonant frequency of the filter be selected to be five times
the switching frequency of the PWM inverter. Moreover, the
operating frequency of the RLC filter should be chosen to be
near the resonant frequency to minimize the voltage
overshoot.

Figure 6. LC filter at the inverter terminal.

Figure 4. RLC filter at the motor terminal.

E. LC clamp filterat the inverter terminal

As discussed above, the resonance of an LC filter makes
the design of such a filter difficult, since carrier frequencies
of general-purpose drives often vary between 5 kHz and 20
kHz. Thus, resistors are proposed to be added to the filter to
dampen the resonance, and first-order filters of the RL or RC
type have also been suggested [15]-[17] to eliminate the
resonance altogether, as shown in Fig.7.

C. Output reactor at the inverter

An output reactor at the inverter, as shown in Fig.5, may
be the simplest method of conditioning the motor terminal
voltage. The output reactor reduces the of the inverter
output voltage, which in turn reduces the at the motor
terminals. However, the overvoltage suppression is almost
proportional to the reactor impedance, and a high value of
impedance will cause an increase in cost and weight, and it
will also deteriorate the drive systems power factor. Besides,
adding a series reactor can introduce a voltage drop at the
fundamental output frequency, which reduces the ability of
the motor to produce rated torque [12].

(a)

(b)
Figure 5. Output reactor at the inverter terminal.

D. LC filter at the inverter terminal

As a very cost-efficient type, LC filters are suggested to
mitigate the overvoltage at the motor terminals [13] [14], and
the corresponding topology is shown in Fig.6. However, the
design of this kind of filter is complicated by the fact that
overvoltage can occur due to the filter resonance. For this

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(c)
Figure 7. Conventional RLC filters at the inverter terminal.

However, the physical size and power losses of the

traditional filters shown in Fig.7 are considerable because of
the introduction of resistors. A low-loss LC filter clamped by
diode bridges, as shown in Fig.8, has been put forward in
[18]-[20]. For this filter, the LC resonating voltage is
clamped to the dc-bus voltage by virtue of the fast recovery
diodes, and the rising time of inverter output voltage can be
controlled by the values of L and C of the filter. Compared
with the traditional LC filters the physical dimensions of
diode clamping filters are smaller. Moreover, the power
losses in the clamping circuit are decreased in comparison to
the losses in the damping resistors of Fig.7.

can be seen, there is almost no voltage overshoot because of

the clamping effect of diode bridges.
Table II summarizes the quantities and qualities of the
components parameters, voltage overshoots, and power
losses of the filters discusses above. These results are briefly
discussed in the conclusions.

Figure 9. Distributed parameter model of the cable (one section shown).

Figure 8. LC clamp filter with diode bridge at the inverter terminal.

IV.

SIMULATION AND COMPARISON OF VARIOUS FILTERS

A simulation model is developed in ANSYS/Simplorer

9.0 to simulate the effect of the high voltage gradient and
impedance mismatch at the motor terminals fed by a long
cable. The long line cable whose length is 90m feeding the
AC motor is modeled by the 10 sections L-R-C network
which is shown in Fig.9. The parameters of the cable are
shown in Table I. In the simulation, a 460-V 5-hp induction
motor, with the surge impedance of 800 (according to the
curve of surge impedance vs. horse power size, presented in
[21]), was used in the PWM inverter fed motor drive system.
Here, Fig.10 through Fig.15 show the normalized line-toline voltage at the inverter terminals and motor terminals
with the various passive filters discussed in Section III. Fig.
10 shows that the voltage at the motor terminals was
suppressed with a maximum overshoot of 13.12% which was
achieved by employing an RC filter at the motor end. Fig.11
shows the effect of overvoltage elimination after using an
RLC filter at the motor terminals, for which case the voltage
overshoot is 35.02%, which is somewhat larger than that of
an RC filter. Fig.12 shows the simulation results of an RLC
filter installed at the inverter terminals. For this filter, the line
voltage at the motor terminals was effectively suppressed
with an overshoot of 11.83%. In Fig. 13, the effect of an
output reactor at the inverter side was demonstrated. As can
be seen, although the line voltage at the motor terminals was
suppressed and filtered to be sinusoidal, the switching
harmonics are considerable. Moreover, there is still 19.50%
overshoot in the line voltage at the motor terminals. Fig.14
shows the normalized line voltages at the inverter terminals
and motor terminals with the application of an LC filter at
the inverter output. Comparing these simulation results with
those of the case in Fig.13, there are less switching
harmonics in the voltage at motor terminals when using an
LC filter, and the reason is that switching harmonics are
eliminated by the filter capacitors. Fig. 15 shows the
simulation results of the case utilizing an LC clamp filter. As

Figure 10. Line voltages at inverter and motor terminals with RC filter at
the motor for a 460-V 5-hp 5-kHz induction motor drive fed by 90m-cable.

Figure 11. Line voltages at inverter and motor terminals with RLC filter at
the motor for a 460-V 5-hp 5-kHz induction motor drive fed by 90m-cable.

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Figure 12. Line voltages at inverter and motor terminals with RLC filter at
the inverter for 460-V 5-hp 5-kHz induction motor drive fed by 90m-cable.

Figure 13. Line voltages at inverter and motor terminals with reactor at the
inverter for a 460-V 5-hp 5-kHz induction motor drive fed by 90m-cable.

Figure 14. Line voltages at inverter and motor terminals with LC filter at
the inverter for 460-V 5-hp 5-kHz induction motor drive fed by 90m-cable.

Figure 15. Line voltages at the inverter and motor terminals with LC clamp filters at the inverter output
for a 460-V 5-hp 5-kHz induction motor drive fed by 90m-cable.
TABLE II.

COMPARISON OF VARIOUS PASSIVE FILTERS

Various types of passive filters for 3-phase 460-V 5-hp induction motor fed by 90m cable (assuming

= .

Comparative
factors

RC filter @ motor

RLC filter @ motor

Reactor @ inverter

LC filter @ inverter

RLC filter @ inverter

Clamp filter @ inverter

Resistors

43

125

----

----

43

----

Inductors

----

78.48 H

66 mH

1 mH

33.28 H

1.65 mH

Capacitors

0.22F

20 nF

----

2.81 F

1 F

28.36 F

Power diodes

----

----

----

----

----

6 FRDs needed
(fast recovery diodes)

Voltage
overshoot

13.12%

35.02%

19.50%

11.83%

Power losses

High

High

High

Low

High

Low

V.

CONCLUSIONS

In this paper, an overall literature review on the existing

methods of overvoltage mitigation in long-cable-fed PWM
AC drives has been presented. The main factors contributing
to the overvoltage at the motor terminals have been analyzed.
Topologies of typical passive filters and their corresponding
design methodologies were elaborated. Simulation results
and the comparative analysis demonstrate that each filter has
its advantages and drawbacks. Whether a filter is good or
bad depends on the specific industry application. In terms of

simplicity, a reactor at the inverter output is the best; In

terms of reliability and power losses, the LC clamp filter at
the inverter terminals may be the most appropriate. In terms
of suppression of voltage overshoot, the RC filter at the
motor terminals may be the most recommendable. Therefore,
how to select the best filters for overvoltage suppression
should be decided by users based on the specific industrial
layout and requirements.
Furthermore, the effectiveness of some active
/
filters, presented in [22] cannot be ignored if the use of

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complex algorithms is acceptable for the given application.

Moreover, innovative inverters, such as resonant inverters
(presented in [23]) and multilevel inverters (presented in
[24]-[26]) are also significant in reducing high / and
common mode voltage stress on the motor bearing, but they
can be adopted only if the systems cost and hardware
complexity can be justified.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors would like to express thanks to the US
National Science Foundation (NSF) for the partial financial
support for the work in this paper (grant NSF-GOALI No.
1028348). Also, the access to Simplorer 9.0 and its related
application assistance from ANSYS Corporation are greatly
appreciated.
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