Journal of Power Electronics

The Korean Institute of Power Electronics (전력전자학회)
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Investigation of Capacitor Voltage Regulation in Modular Multilevel Converters with Staircase Modulation

  • Shen, Ke (Department of Electrical Engineering, Harbin Institute of Technology) ;
  • Wang, Jianze (Department of Electrical Engineering, Harbin Institute of Technology) ;
  • Zhao, Dan (Center for Applied R&D, Monolithic Power Systems) ;
  • Ban, Mingfei (Department of Electrical Engineering, Harbin Institute of Technology) ;
  • Ji, Yanchao (Department of Electrical Engineering, Harbin Institute of Technology) ;
  • Cai, Xingguo (Department of Electrical Engineering, Harbin Institute of Technology)
  • Received : 2012.11.26
  • Accepted : 2013.11.05
  • Published : 2014.03.20
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Abstract

This paper presents a detailed theoretical analysis and performance assessment of the capacitor voltage balancing strategies for staircase modulated modular multilevel converters (MMC) in terms of the algorithm structures, voltage balancing effect, and switching frequency. A constant-frequency redundancy selection (CFRS) method with minimal switching loss is proposed and the function realization of specific modules of the algorithm is given. This method is simple and efficient in both switching frequency and regulation capacity. Laboratory results show very good agreement with the theoretical analysis and numerical simulations.

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References

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