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This article presents a simple yet effective capacitor voltage balancing method for a five-level nested neutral point clamped (NNPC) converter. The NNPC has been recently developed for medium-voltage high-power applications and has interesting features. This hybrid topology has three flying capacitors in each leg. Like other flying capacitor-based topologies, it is necessary to regulate and balance the voltage of the flying capacitors in an NNPC converter to certain values. In this article, a new approach is proposed to accomplish this task. The proposed regulation technique employs line current direction and voltage deviation of flying capacitors to achieve regulation. The charging/discharging status of flying capacitors with respect to different switching states is used to define a priority index. This index is eventually used to select the proper switching state. A detailed investigation is presented to determine the best switching state for each level of the output voltage. The proposed method does not need any cost function and is very intuitive and simple to implement. Using simulations, the amplitude of the flying capacitor voltage ripple is measured, which shows reduction under all operating conditions. The feasibility and performance of the proposed method are confirmed by using a laboratory-type experimental setup. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a description and analysis of a full-bridge converter with a novel passive and robust auxiliary circuit for zero-voltage-switching (ZVS) operation. A generalized time-domain state-space analysis is provided to describe the steadystate behavior of the auxiliary circuit. Complete comparison between the well-known single-inductor auxiliary circuit, and the proposed one is presented. For a similar peak current in the auxiliary branch, needed for ZVS, a minimum of 20% reduction in rms current is achieved to decrease the conduction losses in the power switches and in the auxiliary circuit. Also, 65% reduction in switching frequency variation is obtained. This narrower frequency range reduces the need for very high-frequency operation and the associated gate driver losses as well as the difficulty of electromagnetic interference (EMI) filter design. All the theoretical results are experimentally verified. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The first part of this article reviews the concepts of apparent power and power factor in single-phase circuits with non-negligible line impedances. The study is based on the well-known definition that the apparent power is the maximum load power subject to constant line losses and constant load voltage. In reality, however, all transmission/distribution lines have some finite impedance, and thus, the constant voltage condition cannot be maintained at the load terminals. In this article, the constant load voltage condition is relaxed and allowed to change, as long as it remains within acceptable range of application. This is a scenario that better reflects the realistic situations. Modified expressions for the apparent power and power factor are derived and discussed. The second part of the article presents a new concept called the current factor as the ratio of the minimal current to the actual current while keeping the load power constant. The current factor coincides with the power factor when the line impedances are neglected. The article explains how the current factor can be superior to the power factor when the line impedances are not negligible. The current factor is then extended to non-sinusoidal current factor for a non-linear load and is examined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper introduces the application of an enhanced phase-locked loop (EPLL) system to the estimation of synchrophasors in a phasor measurement unit (PMU). The major concern is accurate estimation within off-nominal frequency operation of the system. The well-known technique based on discrete Fourier transform (DFT) can provide accurate estimation of the phasors in a three-phase balanced system. However, the negative-sequence component causes errors to the DFT estimates. The DFT cannot accomplish this task in a single-phase system. The EPLL is shown to be a solution for those shortcomings of the DFT technique, both in single-phase and in unbalanced three-phase systems, at the expense of some more complicated structure. Extensive steady-state and dynamic tests are performed and the results are presented and discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper introduces a new three-phase harmonic- decomposition technique to extract voltage/current harmonics for use in grid-connected converters, such as for active power filters (APFs). The main function of this technique is to detect a selective order of harmonics for control purposes. This feature is useful when elimination of certain harmonics is of concern. Moreover, the proposed method can successfully detect and track the variations in the frequency of the signal and extract the time-varying harmonics. A theoretical analysis is presented, and the performance of the method is experimentally evaluated. The methodology is applicable for a wide range of equipment such as uninterruptible power supplies, regenerative converters, APFs, etc., as a basis for the detection of the reference signals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A simple and effective space vector pulse width- modulation technique for six-phase voltage-source-inverter-fed split-phase induction motors is presented in this paper. The approach employs dual three-phase space vector modulators equipped with overmodulation schemes that compensate for the voltage gain reduction due to the use of two independently controlled three-phase inverters. It secures full control of the voltage gain up to the maximum achievable gain with negligible low-order harmonics and utilizes a simple classification algorithm for the implementation of the space vector modulation (SVM) in both linear and overmodulation modes. Experimental results are provided to verify the validity of the proposed SVM split-phase approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a simple voltage balancing scheme for m-level diode-clamped multilevel converters (DCMC). This paper first introduces a novel and simple current flow model for general m-level DCMCs. The superiority of the proposed model is its independence from the modulation scheme and its simplicity. It also provides a new perspective for voltage sharing accessibility among the dc link capacitors. The proposed current flow model, a cost function, and a space vector modulation (SVM) switching strategy are then used to balance the capacitors' voltages of the DCMCs in a very simple and optimized manner. Such a voltage balancing scheme was not developed for converters of five levels or greater due to the complexity of the converter and its modeling approaches. To validate the feasibility of the proposed voltage balancing scheme, this paper presents analytical and simulation results obtained from a five-level DCMC. In particular, this paper introduces a stability region within which the voltage balancing strategy converges. The impact of the cost function on the stability margins and converter performance is examined and discussed by means of comparison with different cost functions, and it is shown that the proposed cost function will improve the stability margins. The performance of the strategy for unbalanced and polluted loads shows that, unexpectedly, in some specific cases output current harmonics will improve the stability margin. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pulsewidth-modulated (PWM) techniques equip power converters with unique features such as input-output linearity and control flexibility. Nevertheless, frequent switching of semiconductor switching devices causes considerable switching loss, and therefore makes traditional two-level PWM converters inappropriate for high-power applications. Two alternatives for building modular structures, namely multipulse and multimodule PWM converters were introduced to provide not only voltage and current sharing among the semiconductor switching devices, but also a high-quality output voltage at a much lower switching frequency. While multipulse converters offer minimal switching losses, low-order harmonic neutralization, and the best utilization of the inverter, multimodule PWM converters give control flexibility and power structure simplicity. This paper combines these two, and preserves the advantages of both multipulse and multimodule PWM converters. This not only provides an additional degree of freedom for voltage control, but also enables the converter to operate in PWM mode during transient and in single-pulse mode during the steady state. For the PWM switching mode, a special space vector strategy of 3 p.u. switching frequency is presented to maximize the voltage utilization and maintain a linear transfer characteristic. The power structure and control methods are analyzed, and validated by simulation and experimentally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To address the inaccurate load demand sharing problems among parallel inverter-interfaced voltage-controlled distributed generation (DG) units in islanded microgrids (MGs) with different DG power ratings and mismatched feeder impedances, an enhanced voltage control scheme based on the active compensation of circulating voltage drops is proposed in this paper. Using the proposed strategy, reactive power and harmonic currents are shared accurately and proportionally without knowledge of the feeder impedances. Since the proposed local controller consists of two well-separated fundamental and harmonic voltage control branches, the reactive power and harmonic currents can be independently shared without having a remarkable effect on the amplitude or quality of the DGs voltage, even if nonlinear (harmonic) loads are directly connected at the output terminals of the units. In addition, accurate load sharing can also be attained when the plug-and-play performance of DGs and various loading conditions are applied to MGs. The effects of communication failures and latency on the performance of the proposed strategy are also explored. The design process of the proposed control system is presented in detail and comprehensive simulation studies on a three-phase MG are provided to validate the effectiveness of the proposed control method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]