Improving Power Quality in Cascade

Multilevel Converters Based on Single-

Phase Nonregenerative Power Cells
Interharmonics exist in the ac supply currents in ac/dc/ac drives
mainly due to the poor decoupled behavior of the dc-link stage.
This issue is particularly evident when different input/output
operating frequencies are used, causing harmful effects
on power transformers and reducing the system efficiency
and power quality. Consequently, large interharmonics can be
found in converters with single-phase stages, as they require
large electrolytic capacitors to filter out the dc-link second
harmonic of voltage and current, which is usually not fully
accomplished. This is the case of the cascade
multilevelconverter based on single-phase power cells, where
each module has a single-phase rectifier and a single-phase
inverter stage that cannot be effectively decoupled with
standard size capacitors. This paper shows that it is
possible to improve the quality of the power cell input currents
when the input/output frequencies are different in the cascade
multilevel converter. This is achieved by means of magnetic
couplings among the dc-links of the power cells that feed
different output phases, while keeping the high power quality on
the load side.

Published in:
Industrial Electronics, IEEE Transactions on (Volume:61
, Issue: 9 )
Date of Publication:
Sept. 2014
Page(s):
4498 - 4509

ISSN :
0278-0046

INSPEC Accession Number:

14181321

Digital Object Identifier :

10.1109/TIE.2013.2289866

Date of Publication :
08 November 2013

Date of Current Version :

21 March 2014

Issue Date :
Sept. 2014

Sponsored by :
IEEE Industrial Electronics Society

Publisher:
IEEE
Selective harmonic mitigation-pulse-
width modulation technique with variable
DC-link voltages in single and three-
phase cascaded H-bridge inverters

There are different modulation techniques that can be used in

medium-voltage and high-powerelectronic converters, but a few
of them provide high efficiency and
satisfy power quality requirements. This study presents a
modified selective harmonic mitigation pulse-width modulation
(SHM-PWM) technique which employs variable DC-link
voltages as a degree of freedom in cascaded H-bridge (CHB)
inverters. This degree of freedom increases the range of
acceptable modulation indices, reduces the number of
switching transitions and increases the number of harmonics
that can be removed in selective harmonic elimination (SHE)
(or SHM) techniques. Hence, in
addition to efficiencyimprovement, a huge number of harmonics
can be mitigated in AC side of the converter. Using this
approach, triplen harmonics can be restricted to standard limits,
in single-phase inverters. In addition, the proposed SHM-PWM
approach employs the least number of switching transitions in a
fundamental period to limit the specific number of harmonics
compared to the alternative SHE or SHM techniques. In this
study, the requirements of two well-known grid codes EN
50160 and CIGRE WG 36-05 are well satisfied and the validity
of proposed method is verified by several simulations and
experiments on a seven-level CHB inverter in single-phase and
three-phase operating modes.

Published in:
Power Electronics, IET (Volume:7 , Issue: 4 )

Date of Publication:
April 2014
Page(s):
924 - 932

ISSN :
1755-4535

INSPEC Accession Number:

14182449

Digital Object Identifier :

10.1049/iet-pel.2013.0315

Date of Current Version :

05 May 2014

Issue Date :
April 2014

Sponsored by :
Institution of Engineering and Technology

Publisher:
IET