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Summary DC‐DC converters play a vital role in the integration of renewable energy sources. Modular multilevel converter (MMC) has emerged as a highly promising option for high‐voltage high‐power applications, for DC‐AC and DC‐DC conversion, thanks to its distinctive characteristics. An inherent limitation of using traditional MMC in DC‐DC conversion is the occurrence of arm energy drift, leading to imbalanced voltages across capacitors of submodules (SMs). Many approaches have been presented in the literature to address the energy drift issue during DC‐DC conversion process. In this paper, a novel bidirectional hybrid modular multilevel DC‐DC converter with balanced arm energy has been proposed. The proposed converter consists of one high‐voltage valve and two legs. Each leg is equipped with half‐bridge submodules (HB‐SMs) in the upper arm and full‐bridge submodules (FB‐SMs) in the lower arm. The proposed architecture enables the parallel connection between series‐connected capacitors of the upper arm and series‐connected capacitors of the lower arm during the equalization period. The parallel connectivity enables the energy transfer between the upper and lower arms in the same leg, hence preventing energy drift issues. A detailed illustration of converter operational concept, mathematical analysis, design, and efficiency estimation are presented. The presented simulation and experimental results show the bidirectional power flow ability and the promising behavior of the proposed converter during normal operating conditions with balanced arm energy. Finally, a comparison between the proposed converter and other existing topologies has been made to show the superiority of the proposed converter over the other alternatives. The proposed converter has a lower count of insulated gate bipolar transistors (IGBTs) and eliminates the usage of isolating transformers when compared to the energy equalization modules approach. In addition, unlike the other alternatives, the proposed converter has a DC fault blocking capability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: Renewable energy sources (RESs) need power‐electronics‐based converters to deliver the acquired power to the grid. Those converters should provide voltage‐bucking/boosting capabilities to accommodate various grid modes specially for three‐phase distorted commonly unbalanced distribution utility networks. Several power electronic‐based converters have been elaborated to fulfill this high‐demand market. Single‐stage converters are the most dominant in the market where the current source inverters (CSIs), impedance source inverters (ZSIs), and boost inverters are the high‐end candidates. The aspects of cost, footprint, and minimal numbers of active switches, in addition to simplified controllability, build the main challenges that face the evolution of robust renewable energy‐associated grid‐tied converters. This paper presents a novel three‐phase differential‐mode buck‐boost inverter based on two bidirectional buck‐boost DC/DC converters and one differential power processor (DPP) unit. The proposed topology is a single‐stage DC/AC converter offering bucking/boosting capability, with reduced hardware requirements. The proposed topology features a simplified control methodology in addition to reduced size and cost of the hardware setup which makes it more suitable for grid‐tied renewable energy applications. The operation principles, small‐signal model, and control strategy of the proposed topology are also illustrated. Simulation and experimental results are presented in details to verify the topology‐enhanced performance under various operating conditions. The deducted results elucidate the viability of the proposed configuration alongside with the claimed merits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Conventional modular multilevel converters (MMCs) are widely used in high power applications due to their various astonishing advantages; however, they fail to achieve balanced capacitor voltage in DC operation. In this paper, a hybrid two‐stage modular DC–DC converter is proposed to solve the issue of unbalanced capacitor voltages. The proposed converter consists of a single‐phase half‐bridge MMC with half‐bridge submodules followed by a medium voltage valves‐based H‐bridge rectifier. The proposed converter is used in medium‐voltage applications such as feeding a DC‐load or interconnection between two DC grids of different voltage levels. The proposed configuration achieves successful DC–DC conversion with a low number of switches, a high conversion ratio with bidirectional power flow, low current stresses, soft switching across the second stage, and low switching losses. The operational concept and the control algorithm have been illustrated in detail. Finally, the effectiveness of the proposed DC–DC converter is evaluated based on simulation studies of MATLAB SIMULINK and a scaled‐down laboratory experimental test rig. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]