Capacitor Balance in Anpc PDF
Capacitor Balance in Anpc PDF
Capacitor Balance in Anpc PDF
3, MARCH 2015
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I. INTRODUCTION
ULTILEVEL converters have been widely used in
high-voltage high-power applications since 1981 [1].
Among the existing multilevel converters, neutral-pointclamped (NPC), flying-capacitor (FC), and cascaded H-bridge
(CHB) multilevel converters are three classical multilevel
topologies that are the most widely used in the industry [2][7].
However, when the number of voltage levels increases, not only
the complexity to control the voltage across the dc-link capacitors in the NPC converter and the FCs in the FC converter, but
also the number of clamping diodes in the NPC converter, FCs
in the FC converter, and isolated transformer windings in the
CHB converter is greatly increased [8][10].
Modular multilevel converter (MMC) is an emerging multilevel converter topology which gains increasing attentions in
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TABLE I
SWITCHING STATES OF THE 5L-ANPC CONVERTER
Fig. 1.
(1)
WANG et al.: CAPACITOR VOLTAGE BALANCING OF A FIVE-LEVEL ANPC CONVERTER USING PHASE-SHIFTED PWM
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(9)
(10)
(7)
B. NP Potential-Balancing Method
As a most important freedom degree in the carrier-based
PWM, zero-sequence voltage does not influence the output line
voltage and current. It leads to different pulse patterns and so
results to different NP currents [26]. If a zero-sequence voltage
uz is injected into the three-phase reference voltages, the actual
phase voltage and reference modulation voltage can be written
as
uox = uox + uz
(8)
urefx = urefx + uz /2.
In order to operate the series-connected or high-voltage
switches at fundamental frequency, the polarity of the initial
three-phase voltages cannot be changed after zero-sequence
voltage injection. Defining the minimal, medium, and maximal values of uoa , uob , and uoc be um in , um id , and um ax ,
respectively, since um ax + um id + um in = 0, there must exist
um ax > 0 and um in < 0, only the polarity of um id is uncertain.
(12)
According to (10) and (12), the average NP current is linearly proportion to the zero-sequence voltage. In order to ensure the polarity of the three-phase voltages unchanged after
zero-sequence voltage injection, according to (8), the region of
zero-sequence voltages is limited to
uref ,m in uz /2 1 uref ,m ax
(13)
where uref ,m in and uref ,m ax are the minimal and maximal values
of uref a , uref b , and urefc , respectively. Then, the maximal and
minimal values of uz are
uz m ax = 2(1 uref ,m ax )
(14)
uz m in = 2uref ,m in .
The two boundary values of average NP current after zerosequence voltage injection can be calculated by plugging uz m ax
and uz m in into (10) or (12). According to the actual upper and
lower dc-link capacitor voltages, the demanded NP current that
is used to balance the NP potential can also be calculated easily
[21]
INP,ref = Cd
udc2 udc1
Ts
(15)
where Cd is the upper/lower dc-link capacitor and Ts is the carrier period. Suppose that the two boundary values corresponding
to uz m ax and uz m in are INP,m ax and INP,m in . Then, an optimum
zero-sequence voltage uz ref can be calculated by adopting the
linear interpolation algorithm
uz ref =
uz m ax uz m in
INP,ref
INP,m ax INP,m in
+
uz m in INP,m ax uz m ax INP,m in
.
INP,m ax INP,m in
(16)
With this optimum zero-sequence voltage uz ref , the NP potential can be balanced effectively with the most appropriate
NP current. The control block diagram of the NP potentialbalancing method is shown in Fig. 3.
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Fig. 3.
(17)
(18)
where dx1 and dx2 are the duty cycles of Sf x1 and Sf x2 in a carrier period, respectively. When using classic PS-PWM, dx1 and
dx2 are equal. So, under ideal and steady-state conditions, the
average FC current is zero and the FC voltage can be naturally
balanced. This characteristic can also be easily obtained in the
FC multilevel converter when PS-PWM is used [27][30]. However, it also may diverge under nonideal and dynamic conditions
if not controlled.
According to (18), a way to regulate the average FC current
is to adjust the duty cycles of Sf x1 and Sf x2 , which varies the
operation time of redundant switching states (V1, V2) or (V5,
V6) essentially. So the PS-PWM method should be modified
slightly to achieve this goal.
Taking Uf x > Uc and iox > 0 as an example, the FC needs to
be discharged. As shown in Fig. 4, there are two cases that should
be considered respectively: 0 urefx 1/2 and 1/2 urefx
1, but the consequences are the same. If the duty cycle of Sf x1
is decreased by t symmetrically, and the duty cycle of Sf x2
is increased by t symmetrically, the output voltage remains
unchanged, but the average FC current becomes negative and
Fig. 4.
can be written as
if x =
2t
iox .
Ts
(19)
WANG et al.: CAPACITOR VOLTAGE BALANCING OF A FIVE-LEVEL ANPC CONVERTER USING PHASE-SHIFTED PWM
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TABLE II
CIRCUIT PARAMETERS USED FOR SIMULATION
Fig. 5.
2t
iox .
Ts
(20)
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Fig. 8. Simulation waveforms of zero-sequence voltage and reference modulation voltages: (a) m = 0.2; (b) m = 1.15.
Fig. 9. Dynamic simulation results with m = 0.2: (a) dc-link capacitor voltages and (b) three-phase FC voltages.
WANG et al.: CAPACITOR VOLTAGE BALANCING OF A FIVE-LEVEL ANPC CONVERTER USING PHASE-SHIFTED PWM
Fig. 11.
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Experimental prototype.
Fig. 10. Dynamic simulation results with m = 0.8: (a) dc-link capacitor voltages and (b) three-phase FC voltages.
B. Experimental Results
A low-power three-phase 5L-ANPC converter prototype has
been built up to verify the proposed control method, as shown
in Fig. 11. The circuit parameters are the same as the simulation
parameters in Table II. In the experiments, the capacitor voltage
control method is investigated with various modulation indices.
For the voltage-balancing control of FCs, the time width t is
set to 20% of the initial time width in the experiments.
Fig. 12 shows the experimental results of the phase voltage,
line voltage, and phase current with modulation index m = 0.8.
Figs. 13 and 14 present the steady-state voltage waveforms of
dc-link capacitors and FCs with modulation indices m = 0.2
and m = 0.8, respectively. It can be seen that the voltages of
dc-link capacitors and FCs are all well balanced. The voltage
ripples increase with the load current.
Fig. 15 shows the dynamic-state waveforms of load changes
from full load to half load and then to full load again with
m = 0.2 and m = 0.8. It can be seen that the dc-link and FC
voltages remain stable during the whole process.
Fig. 16 shows the dynamic-state waveforms when the capacitor voltages are controlled to different values. The voltages
of dc-link capacitors and FCs are controlled balanced at the
Fig. 12. Experimental results of (a) phase voltage (100 V/div), (b) phase to
phase voltage (200 V/div), and (c) phase current (5 A/div).
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Fig. 15. Experimental results of load step changes with (a) m = 0.2 and
(b) m = 1.0. From top to bottom: phase current (10 A/div), dc-link capacitor
voltages (25 V/div), and FC voltages (25 V/div).
Fig. 13. Experimental results of (a) dc-link capacitor voltages (2.5 V/div) and
(b) three-phase FC voltages (1 V/div) with m = 0.2.
Fig. 14. Experimental results of (a) dc-link capacitor voltages (2.5 V/div) and
(b) three-phase FC voltages (1 V/div) with m = 0.8.
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