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http://dx.doi.org/10.6113/JPE.2012.12.2.344

Theoretical Analysis and Control of DC Neutral-point Voltage Balance of Three-level Inverters in Active Power Filters  

He, Yingjie (School of Electrical Engineering, Xi'an Jiaotong University)
Liu, Jinjun (School of Electrical Engineering, Xi'an Jiaotong University)
Tang, Jian (School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Huazhong University of Science & Technology)
Wang, Zhaoan (School of Electrical Engineering, Xi'an Jiaotong University)
Zou, Yunping (School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Huazhong University of Science & Technology)
Publication Information
Journal of Power Electronics / v.12, no.2, 2012 , pp. 344-356 More about this Journal
Abstract
In recent years, multilevel technology has become an effective and practical solution in the field of moderate and high voltage applications. This paper discusses an APF with a three-level NPC inverter. Obviously, the application of such converter to APFs is hindered by the problem of the voltage unbalance of DC capacitors, which leads to system instability. This paper comprehensively analyzes the theoretical limitations of the neutral-point voltage balancing problem for tracking different harmonic currents utilizing current switching functions from the space vector PWM (SVPWM) point of view. The fluctuation of the neutral point caused by the load currents of certain order harmonic frequency is reported and quantified. Furthermore, this paper presents a close-loop digital control algorithm of the DC voltage for this APF. A PI controller regulates the DC voltage in the outer-loop controller. In the current-loop controller, this paper proposes a simple neutral-point voltage control method. The neutral-point voltage imbalance is restrained by selecting small vectors that will move the neutral-point voltage in the direction opposite the direction of the unbalance. The experiment results illustrate that the performance of the proposed approach is satisfactory.
Keywords
Active power filter; DC voltage; Neutral point voltage balancing; Space vector modulation; Three-level NPC inverter;
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