[isaac_alaska]

Originally Posted by MPaulHolmes

Ya, the standard seems to be about -8v off, 15v on. We made a driver on here that does just that. It requires the vla500-01 though, which is out of stock until May.

Ebay might be a good place to find some really big ones nice and cheap:
PRX IGBT CM600HA-24H Power Module 1200Volt 600Amp - eBay (item 350362896821 end time Mar-31-11 12:44:35 PDT)

that's definitely what i had in mind...somewhere i had read that the higher voltage ratings were less efficient, because of the larger collector-to-emitter voltage drop when the device was conducting. (maybe someone can let me know if i'm wrong and misread that) i think i've seen quite a few 600 volt, 400 amp ones on ebay though, and i'll probably go with three of them. 1200 amps seems like a nice round number, and if i ever want to drive an electric shuttle bus with the controller, it should handle it no problem

also, this looks like the part you mentioned...digikey is out of stock but they seem to be available in other places on the internet.
VLA500-01 - POWEREX DC-DC CONV & IGBT DRIVER