Cascaded multilevel inverter with regeneration capability and reduced number of switches

Abstract—multilevel converters are a very interesting alternative for medium and high power drives. One of the more flexible topologies of this type is the cascaded multicell converter. This paper proposes the use of a single-phase reduced cell suitable for cascaded multilevel converters. This cell uses a reduced singlephase active rectifier at the input and an H-bridge inverter at the output side. This topology presents a very good performance, effectively controlling the waveform of the input current and of the output voltage and allowing operation in the motoring and regenerative mode. The results presented in this paper confirm that this medium voltage inverter effectively eliminates low frequency input current harmonics at the primary side of the transformer and operates without problems in regenerative mod

Rectifier power converter for marine applications with compensating capacitor and boost converter stage

Environmental concerns and new emissions regulations, as well as increasing power needs for marine electrical grids, are pushing the development of more efficient power converters for shipboard power systems (SPS). The priorities for SPS design are reliability and power density especially in harsh operating conditions. Safety, space, and weight are of paramount importance requirements on a ship. One factor affecting the design of SPS is the high inductive impedance presented by ac generators, which requires high voltage ratios to compensate for. Therefore, ac-dc converters, sitting as they do between ac generators and the dc bus of the SPS, are identified as a point of potential development to improve the form factor and efficiency of SPS. A novel series capacitor compensation technique is proposed and applied to an ac-dc boost rectifier. Time-averaged equations are derived and compared to simulated waveforms generated using MATLAB/Simulink. Total harmonic distortion (THD) and power factor (PF) are calculated and measured. THD is found to be the limiting factor in designing the proposed compensator. The circuit is simulated in one and three phases, and several input-to-output voltage ratios are compared. To verify the practicality of the compensation method, a single-phase 1 kW rated prototype is implemented and practical results are presented and compared with the simulated waveforms. It is found that the compensation method can control THD to acceptable levels for a large range of inductive impedances, suggesting that this solution should be further developed and investigated for application in SPS.Environmental concerns and new emissions regulations, as well as increasing power needs for marine electrical grids, are pushing the development of more efficient power converters for shipboard power systems (SPS). The priorities for SPS design are reliability and power density especially in harsh operating conditions. Safety, space, and weight are of paramount importance requirements on a ship. One factor affecting the design of SPS is the high inductive impedance presented by ac generators, which requires high voltage ratios to compensate for. Therefore, ac-dc converters, sitting as they do between ac generators and the dc bus of the SPS, are identified as a point of potential development to improve the form factor and efficiency of SPS. A novel series capacitor compensation technique is proposed and applied to an ac-dc boost rectifier. Time-averaged equations are derived and compared to simulated waveforms generated using MATLAB/Simulink. Total harmonic distortion (THD) and power factor (PF) are calculated and measured. THD is found to be the limiting factor in designing the proposed compensator. The circuit is simulated in one and three phases, and several input-to-output voltage ratios are compared. To verify the practicality of the compensation method, a single-phase 1 kW rated prototype is implemented and practical results are presented and compared with the simulated waveforms. It is found that the compensation method can control THD to acceptable levels for a large range of inductive impedances, suggesting that this solution should be further developed and investigated for application in SPS

Integration of an Active Filter and a Single-Phase AC/DC Converter with Reduced Capacitance Requirement and Component Count

Existing methods of incorporating an active filter into an AC/DC converter for eliminating electrolytic capacitors usually require extra power switches. This inevitably leads to an increased system cost and degraded energy efficiency. In this paper, a concept of active-filter integration for single-phase AC/DC converters is reported. The resultant converters can provide simultaneous functions of power factor correction, DC voltage regulation, and active power decoupling for mitigating the low-frequency DC voltage ripple, without an electrolytic capacitor and extra power switch. To complement the operation, two closed-loop voltage-ripple-based reference generation methods are developed for controlling the energy storage components to achieve active power decoupling. Both simulation and experiment have confirmed the eligibility of the proposed concept and control methods in a 210-W rectification system comprising an H-bridge converter with a half-bridge active filter. Interestingly, the end converters (Type I and Type II) can be readily available using a conventional H-bridge converter with minor hardware modification. A stable DC output with merely 1.1% ripple is realized with two 50-μF film capacitors. For the same ripple performance, a 900-μF capacitor is required in conventional converters without an active filter. Moreover, it is found out that the active-filter integration concept might even improve the efficiency performance of the end converters as compared with the original AC/DC converter without integration

Power Converters in Power Electronics

In recent years, power converters have played an important role in power electronics technology for different applications, such as renewable energy systems, electric vehicles, pulsed power generation, and biomedical sciences. Power converters, in the realm of power electronics, are becoming essential for generating electrical power energy in various ways. This Special Issue focuses on the development of novel power converter topologies in power electronics. The topics of interest include, but are not limited to: Z-source converters; multilevel power converter topologies; switched-capacitor-based power converters; power converters for battery management systems; power converters in wireless power transfer techniques; the reliability of power conversion systems; and modulation techniques for advanced power converters