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4, AUGUST 2007
Abstract—The paper presents a five-level inverter scheme with open up. Such a machine’s structure has been considered as
reduced power circuit complexity for an induction motor drive. a serious contender for high-power applications (traction and
The scheme is realized by cascading conventional two-level and similar) since the early 1990s [2]. In more recent times, it is
three-level neutral point clamped inverters in conjunction with an
open-end winding three-phase induction motor drive. An inverter looked at as a possible solution for electric vehicles/hybrid
control scheme with common-mode voltage (CMV) elimination, electric vehicles [14], distributed energy generation systems
along with a simple dc link voltage control, is developed by using [15], and electric ship propulsion [16], [17]. The basic idea is
only switching states with zero CMV for the entire modulation to supply the machine from both ends using inverters with a
range. Theoretical considerations are experimentally verified for certain (small) number of levels [2], [3], which results in mul-
a variety of operating conditions.
tilevel voltage across stator phase windings. Depending on the
Index Terms—Common-mode voltage (CMV) elimination, in- power level of the drive, two inverters that are connected at the
duction motor drives, multilevel inverter, open-end winding two ends of the stator winding can be of the same power/voltage
structure.
rating and can operate at the same switching frequency, or they
can be of very different power/voltage ratings in which case
I. I NTRODUCTION they operate at very different switching frequencies (the con-
cept of a “bulk” inverter operated at switching frequency equal
Fig. 3. State of the switches for legs A and A’ (phase A) of Fig. 2, which leads to the different voltage levels. (a) Leg A at level “2;” leg A’ at level “−2.”
(b) Leg A at level “0;” leg A’ at level “−1.” (c) Leg A at level “1;” leg A’ at level “−2.”
TABLE III
SWITCHING STATES FOR THE VECTOR LOCATIONS OF 30◦ ANGULAR
SECTOR FOR INVERTER SYSTEM A OR INVERTER SYSTEM A’
Fig. 5. Switching states for individual voltage vector locations for the overall
inverter system with zero CMV.
for PWM control (Fig. 5). The switching states for the voltage
vectors are chosen in such a way that the switching losses of
the inverter systems are reduced due to the minimum number
of transitions. Also, the selected switching state combinations
can be effectively used for the dc-link capacitor voltage control,
as explained in the following section. Experimental results for
the PWM control in the innermost sectors are shown in Fig. 6.
Fig. 6(a) shows the pole voltage and phase voltage of the
Fig. 4. Locations of the voltage space vectors for the individual inverter inverter. The top and bottom traces are the pole voltages, and
systems A or A’ with zero CMV. the middle trace is the phase voltage. The motor phase voltage
(top trace) and the motor phase current (bottom trace) are
The PWM signals and the level signals for three phases are presented in Fig. 6(c). The fast Fourier transforms (FFTs) of
generated using the DSP controller. the pole voltage and phase voltage for the PWM control in the
The switching states (Table IV) are stored in the FPGA. inner hexagon are shown in Fig. 6(b) and (d), respectively. It
Fig. 5 shows the inverter switching states, which are used for the can be observed that there are no triplen harmonics in either the
PWM control, with zero CMV at each location. For the present pole voltage or the phase voltage. Experimental results for the
PWM control, from the available redundant switching states three-level operation are given in Fig. 7. Fig. 7(a) shows once
(Table IV), two combinations at a certain location are used more the pole voltage (top and bottom traces) and the phase
2348 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRIAL ELECTRONICS, VOL. 54, NO. 4, AUGUST 2007
TABLE IV
SWITCHING STATE COMBINATIONS WITH ZERO CMV, USED AT ALL VOLTAGE SPACE VECTOR LOCATIONS, FOR THE FIVE-LEVEL INVERTER-FED DRIVE
Fig. 7. PWM operation in the three-level region. (a) y-axis: 1 div = 50 V; Fig. 9. Five-level operation. (a) y-axis: 1 div = 100 V; x-axis: 1 div =
x-axis: 1 div = 20 ms. (c) y-axis: 1 div = 50 V and 1 div = 5 A; x-axis: 5 ms. (c) y-axis: 1 div = 160 V and 1 div = 5 A; x-axis: 1 div = 10 ms.
1 div = 20 ms. (b), (d) Normalized amplitude versus harmonic order. (b), (d) Normalized amplitude versus harmonic order.
Fig. 13. (a) Phase voltage and current for the motor accelerating from zero
speed to the five-level mode of operation. (b) Voltages across the capacitors for
this acceleration transient.
Fig. 11. (a), (b) Phase connections and the currents through the capacitors for
the switching states of the voltage vector B’8. (c) Phase connection and the
capacitor currents for the switching states of the voltage vector B’9.
a nine-level voltage space vector structure for the drive system.
For the present study, the switching state combinations (from
both ends) with zero CMV are chosen for the PWM control,
which results in the five-level inverter-fed drive. Such five-level
inverter-fed induction motor drive scheme generates zero CMV;
hence, all the problems associated with the presence of CMV
variation (such as bearing currents, early motor failure, etc.) are
also eliminated from the drive system. Since CMV is elimi-
nated, the combined inverter system can be fed from a single
dc link. The present scheme requires a significantly smaller
number of switches when compared to the five-level inverter
for the open-end winding induction motor (obtained by cascad-
ing two-level and three-level inverters at each winding side),
previously reported, while enabling the same quality of per-
formance. There are fewer switches, and the switching loss in
the converter is therefore reduced. As two two-level inverters
have been eliminated, when compared to the previous work,
Fig. 12. Proposed power circuit with dc-link balancing and common-mode the cost and complexity of the power circuit will be lower. The
voltage elimination. power circuit is modular in nature and relies on the utilization
of only conventional inverter structures, so that a simple power
intervals. Fig. 13 shows the phase voltage, the phase current, bus structure is possible. The present scheme gives a reduced
and the voltages across the capacitors for the motor accelerating number of switching state redundancies, as compared to the
from zero speed to the five-level mode of operation. The traces previous scheme of [22]. However, the available redundancies
confirm that the present PWM control is capable of balancing are sufficient and can be effectively utilized for CMV elimina-
the voltage across all the four capacitors. However, if there tion; moreover, a simple dc-link capacitor voltage balancing is
is a momentary short circuit that results in a mismatch in also possible, as demonstrated in the paper. This further reduces
the capacitor voltages, this strategy cannot bring the capacitor the power circuit complexity due to a reduction in the number of
voltages to the balanced condition. To take the corrective action required dc-link power supplies. The proposed scheme is exper-
for such conditions, a closed loop control would be required. imentally verified on a 2.5-kW induction motor drive for differ-
Capacitor voltages would have to be sensed, and the correct ent modulation indexes up to and including the 12-step mode.
inverter switching state to balance the capacitor voltages would
have to be correspondingly switched. Development of such a R EFERENCES
closed-loop control scheme is, however, beyond the scope of
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L. Umanand, “A multilevel inverter system for an induction motor From 1995 to 1996, he was with the Amtech
with open-end windings,” IEEE Trans. Ind. Electron., vol. 52, no. 3, Electronics Pvt. Ltd., Gandhinagar, India. From 1996
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[19] V. T. Somasekhar, K. Gopakumar, E. G. Shivakumar, and S. K. Sinha, Vadodara. Since 2001, he has been a member of the faculty in the Institute of
“A space vector modulation scheme for a dual two level inverter Technology, Nirma University of Science and Technology, Ahmedabad, India.
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dual two-level inverter scheme with common-mode voltage elimination Emil Levi (S’89–M’92–SM’99) was born in
for an induction motor drive,” IEEE Trans. Power Electron., vol. 19, no. 3, Zrenjanin, Serbia, in 1958. He received the Dipl. Ing.
pp. 794–805, May 2004. degree from the University of Novi Sad, Novi Sad,
[21] R. S. Kanchan, P. N. Tekwani, M. R. Baiju, K. Gopakumar, and A. Pittet, Serbia, in 1982 and the M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees
“Three level inverter configuration with common-mode voltage elimina- from the University of Belgrade, Belgrade, Serbia,
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[22] P. N. Tekwani, R. S. Kanchan, and K. Gopakumar, “A dual five-level Electrical Engineering, University of Novi Sad. He
inverter-fed induction motor drive with common-mode voltage elimina- joined Liverpool John Moores University, Liverpool,
tion and dc-link capacitor voltage balancing using only the switching state U.K., in May 1992. Since September 2000, he has
redundancy: Part I,” IEEE Trans. Ind. Electron., to be published. been a Professor of electric machines and drives
[23] R. S. Kanchan, M. R. Baiju, K. K. Mohapatra, P. P. Ouseph, and at the same university. He has extensively published in major journals and
K. Gopakumar, “Space vector PWM signal generation for multi-level conference proceedings.
inverters using only the sampled amplitudes of reference phase voltages,” Dr. Levi is an Associate Editor of the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON
Proc. Inst. Electr. Eng.—Electr. Power Appl., vol. 152, no. 2, pp. 297–309, INDUSTRIAL ELECTRONICS and is a member of the Editorial Board of the
Mar. 2005. IEE Proceedings—Electric Power Applications.