Performance evaluation and control of an MMC active rectifier with half-bridge and full-bridge submodules for HVDC applications

Abstract

The modular multilevel active rectifier was designed and evaluated, whereby the half bridge and the full bridge DC-DC converters as its submodules for the high voltage direct current transmission were compared. It was found that, by taking advantage of the unipolar modulation scheme in the full bridge converter, the switching losses in the two converters are equal when they are both operated in the linear modulation region. Furthermore, operating the full bridge converter in the overmodulation region does not give it a pronounced advantage over the half bridge converter. The conduction losses in the full bridge converter are two times higher than those in the half bridge converter, due to double the number of semiconductor devices. However, using the half bridge converter in the high voltage direct current modular multilevel converter requires an expensive DC-side breaker, while use of the full bridge converter eliminates the need for such a breaker due to the intrinsic DC-side fault current blocking capability. The clear choice between the two requires industry cost data.

A design methodology for the submodule capacitor average voltage loop controllers for phase-shifted carrier modulated modular multilevel converters was carried out from first principles. The methodology enables design of such controllers to be carried out in a step by step and straightforward manner without resorting to simulation or guesswork.

A simple but effective submodule capacitor sizing method was proposed. The resulting submodule capacitor size was shown to be smaller than those resulting from other sizing methods proposed in the literature while achieving the submodule capacitor voltage ripple specifications.

A robust DC bus voltage controller design for modular multilevel rectifiers was presented, whereby a design method for multilevel voltage source converters with DC link capacitors was adopted for modular multilevel rectifiers. Since the modular multilevel converters for HVDC application are designed without the DC-link capacitor to mitigate the effects of a possible DC-side fault current, the submodule capacitors in the modular multilevel converter acted as an equivalent DC link capacitor to accomplish the design.