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This article investigates energy storage requirements in the submodules of a class of converters known as hybrid cascaded modular multilvel converters (HC-MMCs). The complexities arising from the usage of different submodule types and their non-conventional arrangement necessitate detailed analysis of submodule capacitor voltage ripples, which are needed for development of guidelines for sizing submodule capacitors. This paper characterizes electric charge variations in the submodule capacitors to derive expressions for capacitor voltage ripples, and to determine the energy storage requirements of the converter. The paper uses detailed electromagnetic transient (EMT) simulations and experimental results on a laboratory-scale MMC setup to verify and validate its findings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes a new control scheme to eliminate the 3rd harmonic in the output currents of grid-following inverters under unbalanced grid conditions. Unbalanced grids adversely affect the performance of grid-following inverters due to the oscillations appearing on the DC-link voltage with a frequency twice the line frequency. The paper is based on instantaneous active reactive control (IARC) technique due to its advantages over other existing methods. However, the presence of severe asymmetrical 3rd harmonic distortions in the inverter output currents is the main challenge with IARC method, which impairs the power quality requirements. This paper enhances the IARC scheme by proposing a 3rd harmonic elimination approach by adopting a current reference generation method using the symmetric sequence components concept. Furthermore, the proposed scheme complies with the grid code requirements by injecting the requested reactive current. Finally, the proposed approach is evaluated by theoretical and simulation analysis and validated experimentally using a hardware setup. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a quantitative analysis of the losses of the hybrid cascaded modular multilevel converter (HC-MMC). Regulation of full-bridge (FB) submodule-capacitor voltages in an HC-MMC requires dedicated strategies that affect the voltage harmonics generated by the converter's main power stage and hence its switching patterns and losses. This paper uses an electromagnetic transient simulator (PSCAD/EMTDC) to estimate the semiconductor losses using the switches’ turn-on and turn-off characteristics. The paper examines the losses of a 45-MW HC-MMC for two recently introduced voltage-regulation methods based upon the modified sinusoidal pulse width modulation (PWM) and an existing method based upon the trapezoidal PWM. Losses of a conventional FB-MMC that offers dc-fault blocking capability are also investigated and compared with those of HC-MMC. The loss comparison results indicate that: first, the two voltage-regulation methods for HC-MMC based upon the modified sinusoidal PWM result in markedly lower semiconductor losses than the trapezoidal PWM method; second, compared with the original HC-MMC, a mixed submodule HC-MMC may lower the semiconductor losses at certain operating points with proper addition of mixed submodules; and finally, HC-MMC may have up to 9.0% lower semiconductor losses (relative) than the conventional FB-MMC. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a direct frequency control for offshore wind farms (OWFs) connected to the diode-rectifier-based (DR-based) high voltage direct current (HVDC) link. The frequency control is guaranteed through reactive power balance at the DR station without a capacitor bank placed at the DR station; while AC-voltage magnitude is clamped by the DR, provided that the HVDC link voltage is imposed by the onshore inverter. The control system is implemented by a voltage source converter (VSC) connected to the DR station. The VSC is also used to compensate harmonic currents, leading to passive AC-filters being also removed from the DR station. The proposed control system provides comparative advantages in terms of DR station volume and OWF installation cost with other centralized controls where besides a VSC, a high-voltage large capacitor bank is needed to be placed at the DR station. A new average-value model (AVM) of the DR system is derived to test the proposed frequency control, while the stability of the system is evaluated through a small-signal analysis. The proposed control system performance and the accuracy of the proposed AVM are verified through a detailed switching model of the system using operation of a cascaded H-bridge VSC. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes an effective method for suppressing the second harmonic dc bus voltage pulsation accounting for the second harmonic torque ripple in the permanent magnet synchronous generator (PMSG) system with asymmetric impedance. Neither the balanced current control nor the instantaneous power control can cope with the second harmonic dc bus voltage pulsation and the second harmonic torque ripple simultaneously in an asymmetric PMSG system. In this paper, the average power control is employed and only the positive sequence currents appear in the system, thus the second harmonic torque ripple will be avoided with balanced back electromagnetic forces. The second harmonic power and dc link voltage pulsations are then reduced by a compensation unit in parallel with dc bus diverting the second harmonic power. The effectiveness of the proposed method is verified through a small-scale wind turbine PMSG prototype with inherent asymmetry and deliberately introduced asymmetries. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The application of underground cables and shunt capacitor banks may introduce power distribution system resonances. In this paper, the impacts of voltage-controlled and current-controlled distributed generation (DG) units to microgrid resonance propagation are compared. It can be seen that a conventional voltage-controlled DG unit with an LC filter has a short-circuit feature at the selected harmonic frequencies, while a current-controlled DG unit presents an open-circuit characteristic. Due to different behaviors at harmonic frequencies, specific harmonic mitigation methods shall be developed for current-controlled and voltage-controlled DG units, respectively. This paper also focuses on developing a voltage-controlled DG unit-based active harmonic damping method for grid-connected and islanding microgrid systems. An improved virtual impedance control method with a virtual damping resistor and a nonlinear virtual capacitor is proposed. The nonlinear virtual capacitor is used to compensate the harmonic voltage drop on the grid-side inductor of a DG unit LCL filter. The virtual resistor is mainly responsible for microgrid resonance damping. The effectiveness of the proposed damping method is examined using both a single DG unit and multiple parallel DG units. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes a selective voltage harmonic compensation strategy for stand-alone inverters. The use of LC output filters makes it possible to reduce switching harmonics at the output terminals of the inverter; however, it also produces voltage distortion when feeding nonlinear loads due to the harmonic voltage drop across the filter inductances. To compensate the voltage harmonic distortion and produce sinusoidal voltage, it is proposed to add virtual impedances to the fundamental voltage control. The whole process and considerations for the impedance design are described and a stability analysis of the system is presented. Finally, simulations and experimental results are shown to confirm the good performance of the proposed strategy under both steady state and load steps. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, an enhanced hierarchical control structure with multiple current loop damping schemes for voltage unbalance and harmonics compensation (UHC) in ac islanded microgrid is proposed to address unequal power sharing problems. The distributed generation (DG) is properly controlled to autonomously compensate voltage unbalance and harmonics while sharing the compensation effort for the real power, reactive power, and unbalance and harmonic powers. The proposed control system of the microgrid mainly consists of the positive sequence real and reactive power droop controllers, voltage and current controllers, the selective virtual impedance loop, the unbalance and harmonics compensators, the secondary control for voltage amplitude and frequency restoration, and the auxiliary control to achieve a high-voltage quality at the point of common coupling. By using the proposed unbalance and harmonics compensation, the auxiliary control, and the virtual positive/negative-sequence impedance loops at fundamental frequency, and the virtual variable harmonic impedance loop at harmonic frequencies, an accurate power sharing is achieved. Moreover, the low bandwidth communication (LBC) technique is adopted to send the compensation command of the secondary control and auxiliary control from the microgrid control center to the local controllers of DG unit. Finally, the hardware-in-the-loop results using dSPACE 1006 platform are presented to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The basic idea of the fractional frequency transmission system (FFTS) is to use lower frequency to reduce the effective electrical length of the ac transmission line, thus increasing its transmission capacity. Because the rotational speeds of the generators in hydro and wind power generation systems are very low, the FFTS is particularly suitable for transmitting electricity produced by renewable energy sources. The fractional frequency wind power system (FFWPS) provides an effective approach for integrating the large-scale and long-distance wind power into the grid. A novel method of the integration of the wind turbines in direct-driven FFWPS is introduced in this paper. A full-power ac–dc–ac converter is used as the grid-connection device in the experiment, and the experiment results verify the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the development of a power interface for a fuel cell (FC) system supplying an ac load. The proposed system comprises a two stages conditioning system, including a switched capacitor dc–dc boost converter and a full bridge insulated-gate bipolar transistor (IGBT) single-phase inverter (dc–ac converter). A fully digital control structure is proposed to manage both power converters using the same control device. The control strategy takes advantage of the parallelism of the field programmable gate arrays (FPGA) technology to share in real-time the controller's information addressing the common problem of low-frequency ripple of FC current when supplying ac loads. The control system has been implemented and evaluated by co-simulation, and by experimentation with a proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEM-FC) system. The results show that the proposed system allows a safe operation of the FC by limiting the current ripple under 3%. These results also confirm that the transient response of the conversion system permits to correctly supply the ac load. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]