Control electronic platform based on floating-point DSP and FPGA for a NPC multilevel back-to-back converter

Modern energy concepts as Distributed Power Generation are changing the appearance of electric distribution and transmission and challenging power electronics researchers, which try to develop new solutions of electronic controllers. The aim is to enable the implementation of new and more complex control algorithms to verify the last standards related to the grid energy quality for new power converters, and, also, for equipments which nowadays are operating. This paper presents the design, implementation and test of a novel real-time controller for a Neutral Point Clamped (NPC) (three-level) multilevel converter based on a floating-point Digital Signal Processor (DSP) and on a Field-Programmable Gate Array (FPGA), by operating in a cooperative way. Although the proposed system can be readily applied to any power electronic application, in this work, it is focused on the next system: a 150 kVA back-to-back three-level NPC Voltage Source Converter (VSC) for wind power applications.