Search

A phase-locked loop (PLL) is commonly used in grid-connected power converter for synchronization. A single input single output (SISO) linear model of PLL with the phase angle of the point of common coupling (PCC) voltage as input and the estimated phase angle as the output is generally used in the PLL analysis and design. However, an undesirable coupling between the magnitude and phase of the input voltage is present when a filtering stage is incorporated before the control loop, which a SISO model cannot capture, and could result in a significant disturbance in the PLL estimated phase during grid faults. This paper proposes a generalized multi-input multi-output (MIMO) linear model that captures the complete PLL dynamics during symmetrical faults for a PLL equipped with any prefilter. Furthermore, a compensation method that decouples the magnitude dynamics of the input voltage from the phase dynamics is proposed in this paper. The proposed compensation improves the PLL's phase tracking performance by ensuring that the prefiltered PLL acts only on the PCC voltage phase changes. A vital application of the proposed compensation method for PLL is during a grid fault case, wherein the converters are expected to contribute to the fault current, which requires an accurate measurement of the PCC voltage phase. The compensation method's effectiveness is demonstrated using power hardware in the loop simulation of a hardware voltage source converter interfaced to a distribution system simulated in real-time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The design rules of winding configurations and stator-pole/rotor-tooth (SP/RT) number combinations of doubly-fed flux-switching permanent magnet (DF-FSPM) machines are investigated in this paper based on coil electromotive force (EMF) vectors. The relationships between the components of stator and rotor coil-EMF vector diagrams are unveiled at first, including the numbers of stator and rotor phases, and the numbers of stator and rotor spokes. Then, the SP/RT number combinations are derived considering feasible stator/rotor phase number combinations and different winding configurations. The SP/RT number combinations are optimized considering the winding factors, magnetic field harmonics, unbalanced magnetic forces and machine diameter. It is shown that both of the stator and rotor pitch factors increase when the SP and RT numbers get closer. Furthermore, the influence of winding configurations and SP/RT number combinations on electromagnetic performances of DF-FSPM machines are analyzed by finite-element method. Finally, the analysis results are validated by experiment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on the back electromotive force generation principle in part I of the series papers, the electromagnetic torque generation mechanism of flux-switching permanent magnet (FSPM) machines is rethought in this article as part II from the perspective of air-gap modulation magnetic field. By magnetic field modulation theory, the air-gap armature magnetic field due to winding currents is modeled. Considering the unipolarity of the stator core, a novel concept of ‘fictitious modulation reluctance (FMR) rotor’ for FSPM machines is proposed. Then, by combining with the air-gap permanent magnet (PM) field and the FMR rotor, generation mechanisms of harmonic PM torque and reluctance torque are investigated. The requirements for FSPM machines to produce a stable electromagnetic torque are determined, i.e., |mPw ± vPr| = Ppm, mrvMfm ≠0, and ωe = Prωr. Besides, the harmonics operation states and harmonic torque characteristics of FSPM machines are analyzed and calculated based on the Maxwell stress tensor method. Further, the average torque versus current density predicted by finite element is validated by testing on an exampled 12s/10p FSPM one. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The widespread application of nonlinear power electronic devices in residential loads has resulted in significant harmonic distortions. Harmonic source modeling is of great importance since it is a prerequisite to estimate the harmonic pollution. In this paper, a dynamic harmonic coupled matrix model (HCMM) is proposed for the nonlinear home appliances. This model is adaptive to the load supply voltage conditions; therefore, the dynamic harmonic generating characteristics of nonlinear home appliances can be demonstrated by the proposed HCMM. Moreover, the HCMM derivation process is based on measurement, independent of the load equivalent circuit, which makes the proposed method most suitable for nonlinear home appliances with unknown circuit topologies. The widely linear complex partial least squares method, which has a fast speed and high robustness, is used to estimate the HCMM. A procedure to establish the HCMM for multistate home appliances is also proposed in this paper. Lab experiments were performed to verify the accuracy and validity of the proposed methodology. The aggregate harmonics caused by multiple nonlinear residential loads have been analyzed based on the proposed HCMM. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Due to different solar radiation, temperature, and other reasons of modules in the three-phase cascaded H-bridge (CHB) photovoltaic (PV) inverter, the output power among PV modules will be unequal and lead to unbalanced grid currents, which cannot meet the requirements of grid codes. On the other hand, the second-order voltage ripple is aroused in the dc-link capacitor since each phase-leg of the CHB inverter is made up of a single-phase inverter. Concerning these two issues, this paper proposes an optimized third harmonic injection method based on fundamental frequency zero sequence injection (FFZSI), which is a conventional method to handle the slight power imbalance problem. In this paper, the FFZSI is adopted to redistribute the power among three phases, and then the third harmonic is injected into the three-phase combined reference waveforms according to the two requirements: all modules are free from overmodulation and the dc-link voltage fluctuation is mostly reduced. Therefore, the proposed method can reduce the dc-link voltage fluctuation and extend the power balance range of FFZSI at the same time. The validity and effectiveness of the proposed method are verified by simulation and experimental results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cascaded H-bridge converter (CHB) is a multilevel topology that is a well-suited solution for multiple applications such as flexible ac transmission systems or motor drives. This paper is focused on a CHB where the cells present an aging mismatch. This can be caused by the maintenance operation which forces the replacement of some damaged cells of the converter with new or repaired ones. In this paper, a new improved approach of the active thermal control (ATC) of the CHB using discontinuous pulsewidth modulation (PWM) (D-PWM) is presented. The D-PWM technique is used to reduce the power losses of one cell reducing its average temperature in order to increase its remaining lifetime. However, the combination of D-PWM with traditional phase-shifted PWM (PS-PWM) introduces high harmonic distortion in the output voltage of the CHB converter at twice the carrier frequency. A detailed harmonic distortion analysis of the CHB output voltage when the D-PWM based ATC is active is presented. From this analysis, a modification of the traditional PS-PWM is derived to eliminate the harmonic distortion at twice the carrier frequency. Experimental results show how the ATC using D-PWM is achieved whereas the harmonic distortion around twice the carrier frequency is eliminated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes a sensorless vibration harmonic frequency estimation for a servo system driven by a permanent magnet (PM) synchronous machine. Traditional vibration harmonic estimation relies on the measurement using external sensors. An accelerometer is typically installed in the servo system to measure the vibration harmonic signal. Because the accelerometer must be attached on the visibly vibrational location inside the system, this vibration detection results in both issues about installation and reliability. To overcome this drawback, this paper proposes a disturbance observer to estimate the vibration harmonic by using current and position signal. A real-time signal process is developed to identify the vibration frequency from estimated harmonic. A servo system with a 400-W PM machine is built to verify the proposed vibration harmonic and frequency estimation. This paper includes the comparative evaluation between the accelerometer-based vibration harmonic measurement and the sensorless estimation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a model predictive control for a six-phase permanent magnet synchronous machine (PMSM) with a reduced-dimension cost function. Only the variables in the harmonic subspace are included into the cost function, while the energy conversion related variables are excluded. This is achieved by using the deadbeat direct torque and flux control method to obtain a reference voltage vector and then to track the torque and stator flux properly in the energy conversion related subspace. Then, according to the position of the reference vector, the appropriate prediction vectors can be determined. Subsequently, a reduced-dimension cost function including only the harmonic constraints is defined to evaluate the feasible prediction vectors. In this way, the predictive model and the cost function are simplified without redundant constraints. Meanwhile, the torque and flux can be regulated satisfactorily, and the harmonic currents are suppressed effectively. Finally, experimental results of the proposed method and the conventional model predictive torque control are presented in this paper to verify the validity of the proposed method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents an optimization method for selective harmonic elimination in a cascaded multilevel inverter using teaching–learning-based optimization (TLBO). The main objective in selective harmonic elimination (SHE) strategy is to eliminate low-order harmonics by solving nonlinear equations and reaching optimal solution, while the fundamental component is satisfied. In this paper, in one side, the influence of optimal dc sources is investigated to reach the SHE goal, and in another side, comparing optimization methods is considered. In this paper, the TLBO as a recently emerged nature-inspired algorithm is presented to provide better results for the SHE in comparison with genetic algorithm, artificial bee colony, imperialistic competitive algorithm, harmony search, ant colony optimization, particle swarm optimization, and differential evolution. For better comparison of those methods and influence of optimal dc sources, 5-, 9-, and 15-level inverters are chosen and MATLAB software is used for optimization. Simulation results show the superiority of TLBO, higher precision and probability of convergence than other mentioned algorithms. Finally, to validate the influence of optimal dc sources and the accuracy of TLBO results, the experimental setup is conducted for a 5-level cascaded H-bridge inverter with optimal dc sources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The wind energy generating system (WEGS) in this paper, aims to provide the required active peak power without high frequency fluctuations even under variable wind speed conditions. The generator speed is adjusted according to the intermittent wind speeds through two voltage source converters (VSCs) connected back to back, namely, machine-side VSC (MSVSC) and utility grid side VSC (UGVSC) across the dc-link capacitor. In this paper, the hybrid generalized integrator control is proposed for switching UGVSC and providing dc offset rejection and immunity against oscillatory errors due to subharmonics, thereby improving the power quality (PQ). Fuzzy logic controller (FLC) is implemented for the speed control of the salient pole synchronous generator (SG) driven by the wind turbine. The FLC provides the tracking of the reference speed under high overshoot transient conditions and narrow bandwidth. The switching of MSVSC is obtained by field oriented control. The dynamic performance is improved by the wind feed-forward term, which reduces the oscillation, ensuring balanced and sinusoidal grid currents. The generated power from the WEGS is fed to the grid. The weak grid conditions, namely, grid voltage unbalance, voltage sag, voltage swell, and grid voltage distortion, are considered. The performance of the system is tested on a laboratory prototype. Test results provide the effectiveness of the system with increased wind penetration and performance under weak grid conditions. Moreover, improving the PQ, the grid current total harmonic distortion meets the requirement of IEEE-519 standard, and is found to be less than 5%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a detailed analysis of the electromagnetic force and vibration behavior of an axial flux permanent magnet synchronous machine (AFPMSM). First, the AFPMSM configuration and two types of dual three-phase winding are introduced. Subsequently, the electromagnetic force of the double-stator inner-rotor AFPMSM is investigated. Its spatial and temporal characteristics are derived analytically and validated through two-dimensional Fourier decomposition. A multiphysics model is established to calculate the vibration of the AFPMSM, which includes control, electromagnetic, structural, and vibration model. The accuracy of this multiphysics model is verified by the modal and vibration test. Furthermore, the vibration of the AFPMSM with three winding types considering current harmonics are calculated based on the multiphysics model. The vibration performance of the AFPMSM with three different winding types are compared and the mechanism of vibration is discussed. It was concluded that the novel detached winding could mitigate the vibration of dual three-phase AFPMSMs. Finally, the vibration test is carried out to validate the theoretical analysis and the experimental results agree well-with the simulation results. This paper provides an effective method for double-stator permanent magnet synchronous machine (PMSMs) to reduce vibration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes an improved coordinated control of standalone brushless doubly fed induction generator (BDFIG) supplying nonlinear loads. Due to the existence of nonlinear loads, the voltage at the point of common coupling becomes distorted with a large number of low-order harmonics, which severely degrades the performance of power generation systems. In order to eliminate the included low-order harmonics, a coordinated control method of harmonic mitigation has been presented in this paper for the control of both machine side and load side converters. Then, a weight factor is introduced to the proposed control method for distributing the contribution of harmonic mitigation between the two converters. Comprehensive experimental results on a 30 kVA BDFIG are presented to verify the proposed control method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a new design of round-shaped transformers applied in diode and controllable rectifiers. Despite conventional three-phase transformers, in round-shaped transformers, voltage is induced on the secondary winding by rotating magnetic field. As a result, in the secondary of this transformer, there can be more than three phases with desired shifts. On the other hand, some rectifier systems may use more bridges supplying from the secondary to improve output dc voltage. However, the rectifier systems produce undesirable current harmonics, especially in controllable systems. This paper discusses how the new design of round-shaped transformers can significantly reduce the harmonic contents of the input current by sinusoidal skewing of the secondary core. The new design is investigated in this paper and its analysis confirms that the harmonics of the input currents can be effectively reduced. Experimental results are also provided to validate the analysis carried out in this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fractional slot concentrated winding (FSCW) permanent magnet synchronous machines (PMSMs) have been a research hotspot over the past few decades. Recently, the magnetic gearing effect in FSCW PMSMs is revealed along with its gear ratio, which is a function of slot/pole number combination. At the design stage of FSCW PMSMs, one of the key issues is the selection of the slot/pole number combination. This paper shows that the gear ratio can contribute to a proper slot/pole number selection in any multiphase FSCW PMSMs by acting as a unified index for a quick overall performance comparison. In this paper, first, the magnetic gearing effect in FSCW PMSMs is explained and the gear ratio is further discussed. The advantages of adopting gear ratio as the overall performance index over other indices are revealed. The influence of the gear ratio on the winding factor, torque output, cogging torque, inductance, and rotor losses of three- and six-phase FSCW PMSMs is analyzed and validated by experiments, thus proving the analyses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes an “isolated soft switching current fed LCC-T resonant dc–dc converter for PV/fuel cell applications.” This converter is able to achieve zero voltage switching for front-end inverter switches and zero-current switching for voltage doubler diodes. The majority of dc–dc converters have compact capacitive (C) filter in output, but high harmonic currents through transformer makes them bulky. The proposed converter attempts to improve harmonic content through a transformer under wide load and input variations as well as it can significantly reduce required turns ratio of transformer to achieve required output voltage. For the above reasons, the proposed converter can offer better footprints and therefore it can be a potential candidate for PV/fuel cell applications. This paper presents basic operating principal, detailed analysis, control, and design of the proposed converter with the help of an example. This converter operates in two modes, i.e., constant duty cycle mode and constant frequency mode, depending on load demand, and is explained through operating curves. Finally, experimental results are included for justifying the proposed theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A fast and precise dynamic phasor estimation algorithm using an adaptive improved second order Levenberg–Marquadt algorithm under stressed and off-nominal frequency circumstances is proposed in this paper. The proposed algorithm ventures a faster quasi-second-order method and in addition, the learning rate is also made adaptive to speed up the convergence. Moreover, the projected estimator essentially filters harmonics, estimates transients in a signal during faults and effectually performs in complex modulated setting which is found commonly in a power system with distributed energy resources. Outcomes reveal that the estimation errors and the convergence time of the proposed approach is way below the minimum requirement of the IEEE C37.118.1 standard. Besides, due to its reduced complexity, the estimator has been successfully implemented on the field programmable gate array (FPGA) platform and has been verified on a practical microgrid scenario including photo voltaic systems. The performance during testing indicates that the proposed technique has potential ability to perform under stressed conditions conforming the accuracy and speed of response. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes a method to improve the accuracy of an absolute magnetic encoder by using harmonic rejection (HR) and a dual-phase-locked loop (DPLL). The encoder consists of two permanent magnets: an edge-located multipolar magnet (MPM) and a center-located bipolar magnet, in which the signal-processing accuracy of the MPM is crucial for achieving high accuracy of the entire encoder. However, the MPM signals are disturbed by nonidealities such as dc offsets, amplitude mismatch, low- and high-order harmonics, and random noises. In this paper, the HR approach investigates the characteristics of nonidealities of the phase detector and rejects them by using gradient descent. In addition, the DPLL remains robust by maintaining a zero steady-state error during a phase jump, a constant frequency, and a ramp frequency. The proposed method is simulated with MATLAB software and implemented in ARM STM32F407ZG. The obtained results demonstrate efficient performance. This method can be applied to any use of quadrature sinusoidal signals, such as in power grids and in permanent-magnet synchronous motor phase detection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A novel parallel-hybrid dual permanent magnet (PM) machine topology with both enhanced torque density and improved flux weakening capability is proposed for electric vehicle propulsion in this paper. The key is to artificially construct the harmonics diversity with a single-layer concentrated armature winding in the stator and thus simultaneously couple the armature field with the excitation field produced by slot PM, rotor PM, and stator dc source, respectively. Enhanced torque density is obtained in this new topology due to the symmetrical flux-modulation effect between dual PM sources. Moreover, benefiting from a parallel excitation characteristic of hybrid magnetic circuit, the demagnetization risk is significantly mitigated for slot PM source and thus an extended flux weakening range is obtained. In this paper, the proposed new topology and its design mechanism are investigated, along with its electromagnetic performance evaluated based on finite-element analysis. Further, some leading design parameters are analyzed and determined to provide a design guideline for the proposed new topology. Finally, a prototype is built and fully tested. Relevant experimental results agree well with the finite-element predication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Analytical method for vibration and noise prediction in electrical machines is computationally efficient and widely used. In conventional analytical approaches, the slotted stator is simplified as a cylinder, and it is generally believed that the vibration is more sensitive to the air-gap forces with low spatial orders, hence, those high-order air-gap forces are usually neglected. In this paper, the force distribution on the slotted stator is analyzed using a force transformation model and a new phenomenon, i.e., the modulation effect, is found, which indicates that a high-order air-gap force could also induce a low-mode stator vibration with a large amplitude. As a result, the conventional analytical methods are not so accurate for machines with a strong modulation effect, such as fractional-slot concentrated-winding machines. The existence condition for the modulation effect is also discussed in this paper. Finite-element analysis and experiments have been done to verify the analysis results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the critical parameter design technique for a cascaded H-Bridge (CHB) with selective harmonic elimination (SHE)/compensation (SHC) for single-phase systems. The critical parameters include the filter inductance, the number of H-bridge cells, the dc-bus voltage and the switching frequency. This paper derives the relationship of electrical parameters, topologies, and modulation techniques to the voltage/current harmonic envelopes, and compares the filter inductor design for an H-Bridge with sinusoidal pulsewidth modulation (SPWM), an H-Bridge (HB) with SHE/SHC and a CHB with SHE/SHC. Furthermore, a harmonic-envelope-based approach is developed to determine the optimum design parameters. The developed approach designs the harmonic envelope with two proposed criteria: the first one is the capacity criterion, which guarantees that the fundamental and controllable components are within the applicable solution range to avoid overmodulation; the other one is the attenuation criterion, which ensures that the uncontrollable harmonic complies with the grid limit. Simulations and experiments verified that a CHB designed with the proposed technique can simultaneously fulfill the compensation objectives and meet the harmonic limits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper develops a comprehensive dynamic-phasor-based small-signal model for the modular multilevel converter (MMC) system under unbalanced grid conditions, which takes into consideration the dynamics of the MMC system under a balanced grid condition as well as the other emerging internal harmonics produced by the unbalanced grid components and more complex controllers. The small-signal model is validated by comparing the time-domain responses from a detailed electromagnetic transient (EMT) simulation in PSCAD/EMTDC. Based on the eigen-analysis and PSCAD-based time-domain simulation studies, this paper reveals the poorly damped modes that cause unstable oscillations in MMC system under the unbalanced grid conditions. From the results, more poorly damped modes involved in the internal harmonics are emerging under unbalanced grid conditions compared with the modes under the balanced grid conditions, and can highly impact the system dynamic behaviors by the selection of the control parameters. It is also shown that, under the unbalanced grid conditions, the feasible region of the control parameters of the vector current control gets narrowed indicating the reduction of the stability margin, smaller (larger) value of proportional (integral) gain of the circulating current suppressing controller can enhance the system stability, and larger values of the proportional and integral gains of the negative-sequence current suppressing control can result in the harmonic instability of the MMC system. Besides, the parameters of multiple complex-coefficient filters for positive- and negative-sequence components extraction also have a big impact on the small-signal stability of the MMC system and are required to be properly selected. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The circulating current of modular multilevel converter (MMC) has a great impact on the power losses, the submodule (SM) capacitor voltage ripples, and the rating of power devices. Existing analysis of circulating current has considered the capacitor voltage and the modulation signal. In this paper, the effect of semiconductor devices on the circulating current is further presented. In order to realize the different circulating current injection targets under different conditions, a unified online calculation scheme by using the instantaneous information of MMC is proposed in this paper to generate the circulating current injection references. It avoids detecting the amplitude and phase of the output current or using an extensive lookup table. Besides, a mathematical analysis model is built and it reveals the impact on the capacitor voltage ripple and the rms value of arm current with different injection references, thus guide the determination of the injection ratio. Experimental results based on a three-phase MMC prototype with six SMs per arm are presented to demonstrate the analysis of circulating current and the proposed circulating current injection references generating method is verified by different circulating current control targets with different loads. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Induction motor drives operated with a low ratio of the switching frequency to the fundamental frequency (i.e., pulse number) are prone to have high magnitudes of low-order torque harmonics. This paper proposes a method to analytically evaluate the harmonic torque spectrum based on the pulsewidth-modulated voltage waveforms for low pulse number operation. The predicted torque harmonic spectra for different pulsewidth-modulated waveforms are validated through simulations and experiments. This paper also reports optimal switching angles to minimize the total rms value of torque harmonics of order 6, 12, 18 $,\dots,$ $6(N-1)$ , considering the number of switching angles per quarter ($N$) to be 4 and 5. Compared to sine triangle pulsewidth modulation and selective harmonic elimination pulsewidth modulation with the same pulse number, the proposed optimal switching angles significantly reduce the total rms value of all harmonic torques of order lower than $6N$. Extensive simulation and experimental results on a 3.7-kW induction motor drive are presented to demonstrate the superior performance of the proposed optimal pulsewidth modulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The rising cost of production testing for a system-on-a-chip (SoC) is one of the crucial matters to chip makers, due to long test time and costly automated-test-equipment. This paper proposes a spectral leakage-driven built-in self-test (BIST) scheme to precisely predict the nonlinearity of mixed-signal circuits in the loopback mode, thereby accomplishing cost-effectiveness (compared to previous BIST-based works). A digitally synthesized single-tone sinusoidal stimulus used for conventional harmonic testing is incoherently sampled by a device under test (DUT). The DUT output signal exhibits the correlation between the DUT harmonics and the spectral leakage introduced by the incoherent sampling. The DUT output signal is then fed to another DUT through a loopback path, so that the harmonics of a pair of DUTs are correlated with the spectral leakage on the loopback response; the magnitude of the spectral leakage is considered as a weighting factor on the harmonic magnitude of those DUTs. The correlation is quantitatively modeled as characteristic equations in , and postprocessing predicts the harmonics of the two individual DUTs, by simultaneously solving the characteristic equations using on-chip DSP core available in an SoC. Simulation and hardware measurements validated that this paper can be practically used for production testing by showing less than 0.3 and 0.6 dB of the prediction errors, respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Islanded grids operate isolated from the main grid and they allow the use of ac with a different frequency from the main grid. In this paper, it is proposed to use more than one frequency at the same time in such autonomous systems. The grid voltage amplitude at the fundamental frequency can be increased while the voltage peak is constant by adding odd harmonics to the voltage waveform. The grid currents and the power converter currents are decreased for the same power level, which leads to reduced losses in the system. The currents can be minimized if waveform shaping is additionally applied to the current waveforms. The approach also offers the possibility of mitigating the influence of low power factor in single-phase systems. This paper presents the impact of multifrequency power transfer on single-phase converters and grid components such as power cables and protection, and verifies the results with analysis, simulations, and experiments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The need for lighter and smaller railway traction drives and recent advances in power semiconductor technology have resulted in a new energy conversion paradigm, one without the classical heavy and bulky line-frequency transformer. Several multilevel topologies have been introduced over the past years, all having in common the use of medium-frequency (MF) energy conversion to reduce the weight and volume of the magnetic components. This paper is concerned with the design of the input filter for an MF traction converter, focusing on a solution that minimizes the filter's overall mass. Two filter topologies are investigated, namely a single-pole filter (inductor) and a passively damped $LCL$ filter. The paper first describes the requirements to be fulfilled, establishes the spectrum to consider for the design, and proposes a method to determine the initial parameters of the filter's components. The results show that an $LCL$ -type filter achieves considerable weight savings in comparison to the single-pole solution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The steady-state performance of modular multilevel converter (MMC) can be optimized by the following methods: circulating current injection, third-harmonic signal injection, and average capacitor voltage control. However, most of the papers, due to the deficiencies of their MMC models, are limited to the study of adopting just one method and only optimizing a single-aspect of the performance. Thus, this article proposes a general MMC model for the comprehensive study of the steady-state performance optimization. The general model is built based on an equilibrium equation between the internal quantities and the external quantities of the MMC. This general model is capable of analyzing the optimization where the optimizing methods are combined and used to improve the multiaspect performance of the MMC. In addition, more influence factors are taken into account; hence, the calculation error can be smaller than 1% and even the minor effect of each optimizing method can be reflected. The proposed model is compared with traditional models; and it is found that both dc and fundamental components in modulation signals will be affected by the injected circulating current, rather than the constant values in the traditional models. Finally, the proposed MMC model is verified by both simulation and experiment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To reduce stored capacitor energy in modular multilevel converters (MMCs), previous papers propose injection of harmonics in the arm circulating currents and zero-sequence voltages. While this approach is effective, previously utilized combinations of injected harmonics significantly increase converter current ratings. In contrast, the optimization approach developed in this article identifies harmonics that simultaneously achieve capacitor energy optimization and reduced overrating of converter currents. In addition, the proposed approach eliminates the possibility of convergence to local minima, which is a significant improvement on previously proposed nonconvex optimization approaches. Experimental verification of the proposed approach is performed on a low-voltage three-phase modular multilevel converter. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The second harmonic current compensator (SHCC) can be added into the single-phase converters for compensating the second harmonic current (SHC) and thus removing the undesired electrolytic capacitor. In this paper, a virtual impedance, which is in the form of a capacitor and a resistor connected in parallel, is introduced to be in parallel at the bus-side port of the SHCC for effectively compensating the SHC while guaranteeing the system stability. This virtual parallel impedance is realized by feeding forward the bus-side port voltage of the SHCC, and thus the SHCC can be modular designed. The closed-loop parameter design of the SHCC is also presented. A 3.3-kW prototype of a two-stage single-phase power factor correction converter is built and tested in the laboratory, and the experimental results verify the effectiveness and feasibility of the proposed control method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Essential imbalance and fluctuation of the mobile train load draw some problems, e.g., three-phase unbalance, reactive power, voltage and load fluctuation, harmonics, etc. in both public and train supply networks (TSNs). Railway power flow controller (RPFC)'s good performance on dealing with those problems has been convinced in practice these years. However, as the primary task in commercialization, how to qualitatively determine RPFC's design capacity with high cost efficiency and how to comprehensively assess its performance in the design stage have perplexed engineers for many years. To solve those problems in both planning and real-time executing processes, this paper focuses on an RPFC design capacity optimization strategy for grid-connection compatibility and operating performance improvement in terms of both the utility and the TSN. The strategy not only makes a railway substation satisfy the grid-connection standards with high calculating efficiency, but also renders the RPFC to have the minimum design capacity, the excellent feeder voltage control ability, the good fixed capacitor installing prospect, and the high operating efficiency on the targets of reducing the investment and enhancing the transportation ability. The generic models, the industry-oriented design and the quantitative analysis, discussed in this paper give an insight for those concerned based on a balance transformer. Future RPFC projects on serviced railway power systems will benefit from the proposed methodology. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper analyzes the performances of different carrier phase-shifting pulse width modulation (PWM) techniques to be used with a multilevel cascaded H-bridge converter in case of unbalanced operational conditions. In fact, in many practical applications, the ideal condition of equal dc voltages and equal reference signals for each H-bridge cannot be achieved. In such conditions, the conventional carrier phase-shifting PWM technique loses its harmonic canceling capabilities and then the multilevel ac voltage harmonic quality is deeply affected. To overcome this limit of the original technique, different variations have been proposed. All of them still rely on the carrier phase-shifting concept and propose to use a different value of the shifting angle for each carrier (unlike the original technique) whenever unbalanced operational conditions occur. In this paper, the three main solutions proposed over the last years to extend the capabilities of the carrier phase-shifting PWM technique are compared. The analysis is focused on a three-cell cascaded H-bridge converter. Simulation and experimental results are presented. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

High-frequency components of acoustic noise radiated by the electric powertrain make the subjective perception of electric vehicles worse than expected under certain operating conditions. In order to investigate the influence of acoustic components on sound quality, a pulse width modulation (PWM)-fed electric powertrain is studied in this paper. First, the acoustic noise of the electric powertrain is collected in a semianechoic chamber. Then, two types of acoustic components of the electric powertrain, namely harmonic order noise and switching noise, are distinguished through the analyses of supplied current from the inverter and gear vibration. Furthermore, the relationship between subjective perception and spectral characteristics of the noise is discussed, based on which sensitivity is established. Subsequently, the contributions of acoustic components to psychoacoustical parameters are determined. After that, a sound quality model of the acoustic noise radiated by the electric powertrain is established. The comparison between jury test and prediction shows that the established model can be used for sound quality evaluation of the electric powertrain. Finally, the influences of harmonic order noise and switching noise on subjective perception are discussed. The main original contribution of this paper concerns the influences of harmonic order noise and switching noise radiated by PWM-fed electric powertrain on sound quality. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

To improve light load efficiency, a three-phase photovoltaic (PV)-based microinverter may operate in single-phase, two-phase or three-phase mode depending on the available input power. Therefore, its dc-link capacitor may be subjected to large peak-to-peak voltage ripple when operating in phase skipping mode. This paper determines the minimum value of the dc-link capacitor by allowing the maximum acceptable voltage ripple on the dc link. This allows for the use of film capacitors instead of electrolytic capacitors in order to improve the microinverter reliability. Unfortunately, higher dc-link voltage ripple introduces harmonic distortion on the inverter output current waveform if it is not compensated for by the dc-link voltage controller. This paper proposes a simple synchronous control method to regulate the dc-link voltage with the presence of large voltage ripple. The dc-link voltage controller is synchronized with the phase-locked loop and samples the average value of dc-link voltage without introducing unwanted harmonics into the voltage sense path. Experimental results were obtained from a 300-W three-phase half-bridge microinverter prototype to verify the proposed dc-link voltage control performance. Inverter output current total harmonic distortion of 1.6% was achieved even though the dc-link peak-to-peak voltage ripple reached as high as 87 V with 219-V split dc-link voltage. Dynamic response is fast enough to easily track the most extreme ramp change in input PV power. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Conventional permanent magnet (PM) machine open-phase fault detection relies on the estimation of current harmonics using available phase current sensors. Because the magnitudes of current harmonic are proportional to the machine load condition, it is still a challenge to detect a phase fault at light load when fault-induced current harmonics are too small to estimate. This paper investigates the phase fault detection specifically for the conditions under low fault harmonic magnitudes. Both fault-induced harmonics in dq currents and neutral point (NP) voltage are analyzed to find a suited signal for the fault detection. By adding a voltage sensor to measure the NP voltage in a PM machine, a better fault detection performance is achieved because the fault harmonic in NP voltage results in the reduced effect on torque loads and sensor measurement errors. A 50-W PM machine is tested to verify the phase fault detection performance under low fault harmonic magnitudes. This paper includes the experimental evaluation on the detection limitation in terms of load capability using current and voltage fault signals. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

High dc voltage utilization is one of the important requirements in a three-phase inverter. Under some carrier-based pulse width modulations (PWMs), the dc voltage utilization can reach the same maximum as that under the space vector modulation. But the third harmonic component of common-mode voltage (CMV) will be increased markedly while using these carrier-based PWMs in inverters. To improve the situation, this paper proposes that a midpoint-fluctuation carrier (MFC) scheme should be used in the three-phase inverter. The MFC is formed by adding a midpoint-fluctuation signal on the standard symmetrical triangular carrier. By analyzing the linear modulation region of the midpoint-fluctuation signals, a minimum fluctuant signal in the linear modulation region is designed in the paper. Compared with the use of other conventional schemes in the three-phase inverter, the use of minimum MFC scheme has higher fundamental amplitude in the output line voltage and smaller magnitude of the third harmonic in the CMV. The feasibility and validity of the MFC are proved by experiment results in a three-phase inverter. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The traditional evaluation method of vehicle noise can no longer meet the requirements of electric vehicle as the sound character of electric powertrain (E-PT) is totally different from that of internal combustion engine vehicles. This paper presents a complete investigation of the sound quality of an E-PT. An acoustic test is conducted to analyze the sound character of E-PT, based on which the acoustic origins of E-PT including electromagnetic noise, gear whine, and inverter switching noise are studied. After that the sound quality of E-PT is investigated by objective and subjective evaluations. Subsequently, a sound quality model of E-PT based on support vector machine is established. The relative error testifies the effectiveness of the prediction model. The influence of the main noise origins on the sound quality of E-PT is determined. Finally, the structure of gearbox housing is redesigned based on topology optimization to improve the sound quality. The main original contributions of this paper are not only the sound quality method developed for E-PT but also improvement feasibility of sound quality. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper proposes an analytical design procedure for the LLCL and the LCCL filters for grid integration of high-power voltage-source converters. The low switching frequency and stringent limits on grid-injected harmonics in high-power applications lead to large smoothing filters. In order to reduce the size and weight, high-order filters are already proposed and wise design procedures with the main goal of minimizing the overall filter size are being suggested. In this paper, the parameters of the LLCL and the LCCL filters are designed in the per-unit system to satisfy the requirements on the injected grid current and at the same time minimize the overall filter size through minimizing the total energy stored in the filter components. The experimental results of a downscaled laboratory prototype with a low switching frequency prove the effectiveness of the proposed design procedure. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper shows a synchronization technique of power converters based on a limit cycle oscillator (LCO) and a frequency-locked loop (FLL), which makes the system frequency adaptive. The proposed technique LCO-FLL offers a high degree of immunity and robustness against swells, sags, harmonics, and phase-frequency shift. Furthermore, the LCO-FLL has the advantage of performing the synchrony with the grid from any initial condition set for LCO, ensuring an acceptable transient onto the synchronization process. Other advantages of the proposed scheme are that it does not require a phase-locked loop or trigonometric functions and it gives useful information to estimate the positive- and negative-sequence components in a three-phase system with a highly polluted grid scenario. In this paper, a local stability analysis of the LCO-FLL is presented. The behavior and performance of the proposed technique are compared with synchronization techniques by means of experimental results. Furthermore, a three-phase application of the synchronization technique is evaluated experimentally. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The smart transformer (ST), a solid-state transformer with control and communication functionalities, that interfaces medium voltage (MV) and low voltage (LV) grids, enables the control of the frequency in the LV grid independently from the MV one. In a ST-fed distribution grid, the ST can interact with the droop controllers of local generators and loads frequency characteristic to control the LV power demand. However, most of the existing controllers for power converters cannot guarantee good harmonic control under variable frequency condition. To address this issue, a frequency-adaptive control scheme based on the fractional-order repetitive control and the frequency-adaptive phase-locked loop are proposed in this paper. The proposed scheme provides fast online parameter tuning capability in order to be highly adaptive to variable frequencies, and it can be easily implemented in the power converters controllers of a ST-fed distribution grid. Moreover, the stability analysis of the frequency-adaptive system considering the effect of synchronization has been investigated in this paper. Simulation and experiments have been carried out to verify the effectiveness of the proposed scheme as well as the considered scenarios. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper systematically studies a new kind of PM machines with both stator and rotor PM excitations, namely, dual-PM excited machines. The key is to rely on the PM-iron structure in the machine to provide both PM excitation and flux modulation. Besides the fundamental field component in the air-gap, some other predominant harmonics introduced by the flux modulating effect can also contribute to the electromagnetic torque production. Therefore, this kind of machines can be designed with high torque density. Four dual-PM excited machine concepts with the same rotor configuration but different stator structures are comparatively studied, which include double-stator PM machine, stator multitooth-PM machine, stator slot-PM machine, and stator tooth-PM machine (STPM). Based on the flux modulating effect, the general design principle of the dual-PM machines is proposed in this paper. Through analytically investigating the air-gap field harmonics, the physical insight of the dual-PM machines is brought forward. All the four machines are optimized using an improved Tabu search coupled with finite element method, and their electromagnetic performances are comprehensively studied and compared. A prototype of STPM is manufactured. Experimental tests are conducted and the results well verify the electromagnetic design. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Compared with the conventional central shunt active power filter (SAPF), modular designed SAPF can track the harmonics more precisely and quickly with a compact and expandable structure, which makes it a better solution for harmonic mitigation. But there are very few paper discussed about the modeling and parallel resonance issues of modular SAPF parallel system. This paper provides a modeling of three-level SAPF, aiming to guide the modular design and research the parallel resonance control method. First, a simplified modular three-level SAPF modeling is proposed based on averaging impedance modeling and small signal linearization techniques. Then, the coupling issues between modules are researched, and a self-adaptive active damping method is proposed to suppress the system resonance. Based on the modeling results, an improved three-level SAPF module topology is proposed to construct the modular system. The theoretical analysis and experimental results verify that the module topology improvement together with the damping strategy can promise the compensating bandwidth, reliability, and fast, precise harmonics tracking ability. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The selective harmonic current mitigation pulsewidth modulation (SHCM-PWM) technique can be used in cascaded multilevel converters to extend the harmonic reduction spectrum, reduce the coupling inductance and increase the efficiency. The offline SHCM-PWM technique has small number of switching transitions as its switching angles can only change once in a fundamental cycle and relatively long time delays because it uses FFT. As a result, its dynamic response has a lot to desire. As it will be proven in this paper, in four-quadrant power converters, to have a good transient dynamic response, both active and reactive power must be controlled at least two times in a fundamental cycle. In this paper, a hybrid modulation technique is introduced. The proposed technique uses SHCM-PWM under steady state and phase-shift PWM (PSPWM) under transient. In addition, in order to extend the modulation index range and ensure that SHCM-PWM can process four-quadrant active and reactive power, the constraints of the switching angles for the SHCM-PWM are modified. Simulations and experiments are conducted on a seven-level cascaded H-bridge converter to verify the proposed technique. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper proposes a three-phase single-stage grid integrated solar photovoltaic distributed static compensator (SPV-DSTATCOM) system using a leaky least mean fourth (LLMF) control algorithm. The prime contributions of this paper include: 1) the SPV generating system, which fulfills the active power requirement of connected loads and supplies the excess power to the grid; 2) the voltage-source converter (VSC) acts as a dc–ac inverter and DSTATCOM, which provides reactive power compensation, harmonics filtering, load balancing, power factor correction, zero voltage regulation, and mitigates several other power quality issues; 3) even when the SPV power is unavailable, the VSC operates as a DSTATCOM, which enhances the utilization factor of devices; and 4) the LLMF-based control approach for fundamental component extraction from load currents for good harmonics compensation as well as to keep the overall system stable and to achieve rapid response at changing conditions. The proposed system is modeled and simulated using MATLAB/Simulink as well as its performance is verified experimentally on a developed prototype. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Inverter nonlinearity and sampling current dc bias can cause harmonic distortion of estimated back electromotive forces (EMFs), and therefore results in position estimation error and degrades control performance of model-based sensorless techniques of permanent-magnet synchronous motors, especially in low speed region. In this paper, the effects of inverter nonlinearity and sampling current dc bias on back EMF estimation are analyzed. A voltage feedforward compensation method based on an iterative learning control (ILC) algorithm is proposed and it is used to eliminate the harmonics of estimated back EMFs and position estimation error, so as to improve the performance of sensorless control. Compensated voltages at different rotor positions are calculated online by the ILC algorithm and stored in a lookup table. The method does not depend on current polarity and inverter model. And it is simple and easy to implement. The effectiveness of the proposed compensation method is verified by experiments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The circular winding brushless direct current (CWBLDC) motor is a special type of multiphase permanent magnet motors with nonsinusoidal electromotive forces and circularly connected phase windings. The motor does not rely on conventional pulsewidth-modulation inverters and has high torque density and low torque ripple, making it a promising choice for high-power and high-performance applications, such as marine propulsions. This paper studies the radial electromagnetic force of CWBLDC motors. The effect of slot-pole combinations on harmonic contents of the radial force density is analytically derived. Moreover, two computationally efficient numerical methods to calculate the radial electromagnetic force density distribution are proposed based on the space-time symmetry of CWBLDC motors and the superposition principle of the magnetic field, respectively. In order to validate the analysis, vibration testing of a 10-kW CWBLDC prototype is performed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In magnetically suspended rotor (MSR) systems, harmonic current mainly originates from rotor mass imbalance and sensor runout, which can generate multifrequency vibration. Repetitive control (RC) is an effective method to eliminate periodic disturbance from a control system. Conventional RC (CRC) method requires the exact knowledge of the period of the periodic signal. However, in some applications, the period may fluctuate or may not be available with sufficient accuracy, in which case the performance of the CRC severely decays. Besides, the transient response of the CRC is relatively slow. In response to these issues, a second-order RC that incorporates dual mode structure scheme is presented in this paper. By introducing Lagrange-interpolation-based fractional delay filters, the current suppression accuracy gets enhanced in fractional cases. The stability criterion with rigorous proof for the proposed scheme is addressed. The sensitivity to period-time of the proposed scheme is analyzed as well, from the aspect of sensitivity transfer function. Simulation and experimental validations are performed on an MSR to show the effectiveness of the proposed approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The electromagnetic vibration of permanent magnet brush dc (PMBDC) motors has its distinct feature, where only slot-frequency related components exist. Skew slot technique is naturally recalled to mitigate the slot-frequency vibration. Unfortunately, the straight skew slot normally used is not as effective as the mitigation of tooth harmonic electromotive force (EMF) or cogging torque. First, in this paper, the principle of vibration mitigation by straight skew is discussed and compared with mitigation of tooth harmonic EMF and cogging torque. The reason for poor effect of straight skew slot is illustrated by a specifically-designed experiment and finite-element method (FEM) simulation. In order to solve this problem, the zigzag skew PM pole technique is proposed for PMBDC motors for the first time, which overcomes the disadvantage of straight skew slot. The pulsating radial force and bending moment, two main causes of electromagnetic vibration, are derived and analyzed analytically and by the three-dimensional FEM for zigzag skew PM poles. At last, the experiments on two PMBDC motors, one with straight skew slots and the other with zigzag skew PM poles, are conducted to verify the effectiveness of the zigzag pole technique. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the pre and postfault stator current control structures for symmetrical dual three-phase reluctance synchronous machines (SDT-RSMs) with different neutral-point configurations. The effect of winding chording and rotor saliency on the space harmonic mapping among different subspaces is investigated. This proves on one hand that the control structure in the prefault case can be simplified; on the other hand, it shows that the derived harmonic mapping in the literature is insufficient to ensure high-performance operation in the postfault operation. Moreover, the machine nonlinearities are identified, through which the maximum-torque-per-ampere loci are obtained and employed in the pre and postfault cases. The theoretical findings are corroborated with finite-element simulations and experimental validations on a 3-kW SDT-RSM prototype. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper deals with a multipurpose distributed sparse (DS) control approach for a single stage solar photovoltaic (PV) energy generation system (SPEGS). This SPEGS is interfaced here to the three phase grid at varying solar irradiance and compensating the nonlinear load tied at point of common interconnection. The SPEGS performs multitasks. It feeds the generated solar PV power to the local three phase grid. It reduces the harmonics of loads and furnished balanced currents of local three-phase grid. The SPEGS uses a solar PV array, a voltage source converter (VSC), a nonlinear load, a three phase grid, and a dc-link capacitance. In case, when the solar irradiance is not available, the proposed system works as distribution static compensator by utilizing same VSC. For extracting maximum power from the PV source, the traditional perturb and observe (P&O) scheme is utilized here. The tracking performance and efficiency of P&O technique are also examined here at rapid changing climatic conditions to show the behavior of the P&O scheme. The DS control approach is capable to estimate required fundamental component to find out reference grid currents. The proposed control approach is validated on a developed prototype in the laboratory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The advancement in modulation strategies brings emergent solutions to suppress the leakage current in three-phase two-level transformerless grid-connected voltage source inverters (VSIs). However, most of the techniques are analyzed based on reduced common-mode voltage pulsewidth modulation (PWM) in motor drivers but fail to satisfy the specific requirement of grid-connected applications, such as wider power factor operation and lesser current distortion. To overcome such substantial drawbacks, this paper proposes a novel scalar PWM method for transformerless grid-connected VSIs. First, presented through a generalized scalar approach with unified zero-sequence voltage generation, the method is simple to implement and favored in practice. Besides, systematic and comprehensive mathematical analysis is illustrated to exhibit the validity of implemented method in reducing leakage current and shows its advantages over whole power factor range in terms of dc-link current harmonic, output current quality, and switching losses. Finally, simulations and experimental results are carried out to verify the effectiveness and superiority of the proposed method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]