PROJECT TITLE :

A Novel Diode Clamped Modular Multilevel Converter With Simplified Capacitor Voltage Balancing Control - 2017

ABSTRACT:

Multilevel converters have become very enticing for high-voltage-level power conversion in renewable power generation applications. The converter topology is an important issue within the studies of multilevel converter. Several multilevel topologies have been developed, but few of them are qualified with capacitor voltage self-balancing capability. This paper proposes a novel diode-clamped modular multilevel converter with simplified capacitor voltage-balancing control. In this topology, low-power rating diodes are used to clamp the capacitor voltages of the converter. Only the high submodule in each arm of the converter requires capacitor voltage control. Consequently, very few voltage sensors are required for voltage management and also the management computation burden is reduced greatly when the amount of the submodules is high. A easy voltage-balancing management technique with carrier section-shifted modulation strategy is developed for this topology. Experiments based on a laboratory prototype were disbursed and also the results validated the capacitor-balancing performance of the proposed topology.