Electrical design of the BUSSARD inverter system for ASDEX upgrade saddle coils

A set of 16 in-vessel saddle coils is installed in the ASDEX Upgrade (AUG) nuclear fusion experiment for mitigation of edge localized modes (ELM) and feedback control of resistive wall modes (RWM). The coils were driven by DC current only during previous campaigns. Now, a new inverter system “BUSSARD” (German abbr. for “Bayerischer Umrichter, schnell schaltend für AUGs rasche Drehfelder”, translated: “bavarian fast switching inverter for AUG's fast rotating fields”) is built for the experiment. A four-phase system has been assembled to simultaneously operate up to 4 groups of coils consisting of up to 4 serial-connected coils each. The maximum current is 1.3 kA with a ripple in the range of 7% and the frequency is variable between DC and approx. 100 Hz. The switching frequency is variable between approximately 3 and 10 kHz. As a first application, rotating fields are generated. The system can be enhanced in two stages to 16-phase operation with a bandwidth of 500 Hz and a 24 phase system with a bandwidth of up to 3 kHz.