An Advanced Three-Level Active Neutral-Point-Clamped Converter With Improved Fault-Tolerant Capabilities

A resilient fault-tolerant silicon carbide (SiC) three-level power converter topology is introduced based on the traditional active neutral-point-clamped converter. This novel converter topology incorporates a redundant leg to provide fault tolerance during switch open-circuit faults and short-circuit faults. Additionally, the topology is capable of maintaining full output voltage and maximum modulation index in the presence of switch open and short-circuit faults. Moreover, the redundant leg can be employed to share load current with other phase legs to balance thermal stress among semiconductor switches during normal operation. A 25-kW prototype of the novel topology was designed and constructed utilizing 1.2-kV SiC metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistors. Experimental results confirm the anticipated theoretical capabilities of this new three-level converter topology

Fault Tolerant Multilevel Inverter Topologies with Energy Balancing Capability: Photovoltaic Application

The continuous increase in energy demand and depletion of conventional resources motivates the research towards the environment friendly renewable energy sources like solar and wind energy. These sources are best suitable for rural, urban and offshore locations, because of easy installation, less running cost and ample resources (sun light and wind). The remote locations are mostly islanded in nature and far away from technical expertise in case of troubleshooting. This motivates the research on development of fault tolerant converters. These fault tolerant converters increases the reliability, which provides the continuous power supply to critical loads. From the last few decades, the integration of multilevel inverters with renewable energy systems is also increasing because of advantages like, improved power quality, total harmonic distortion (THD) and reduced output filter size requirement. Employing conventional multilevel inverters for increasing the number of voltage levels increases the device count and isolated DC sources. As a result probability of semiconductor switch failure is more and energy balancing issue between sources, which in-turn degrades the reliability and performance of the inverter. The majority of conventional multilevel inverter topologies cannot address energy balancing issues between multiple photovoltaic (PV) sources, which may need because of partial shading, hotspots, uneven charging and discharging of associated batteries etc. If energy sharing not addressed effectively, the batteries which are connected to the shaded or faulty PV system will discharge faster which may cause total system shutdown and leads to under-utilization of healthier part of the system. To address these issues, fault tolerant multilevel inverter topologies with energy balancing capability are presented in this thesis. The major contributions of the proposed work are Single phase and three phase fault tolerant multilevel inverter topologies. viii Energy balancing between sources and dc off set minimization (or batteries) due to uneven charging and discharging of batteries for five-level inverter. Extending the fault tolerance and energy balancing for higher number of voltage levels. The first work of this thesis is focused to develop fault tolerant single phase and three phase multilevel inverter topologies for grid independent photovoltaic systems. The topologies are formed by using three-level and two-level half bridge inverters. The topology fed with multiple voltage sources formed by separate PV strings with MPPT charge controllers and associated batteries. Here the topologies are analyzed for different switch open circuit and/or source failures. The switching redundancy of the proposed inverters is utilized during fault condition for supplying power with lower voltage level so that critical loads are not affected. In general, the power generation in the individual PV systems may not be same at all the times, because of partial shading, local hotspots, wrong maximum power point tracking, dirt accumulation, aging etc. To address this issue energy balancing between individual sources is taken care with the help of redundant switching combinations of proposed five-level inverter carried out in second work. Because of partial shading the associated batteries with these panels will charge and discharge unevenly, which results voltage difference between terminal voltages of sources because of SOC difference. The energy balance between batteries is achieved for all operating conditions by selecting appropriate switching combination. For example during partial shading the associated battery with low SOC is discharged at slower rate than the battery with more SOC until both SOC’s are equal. This also helps in minimization of DC offset into the ac side output voltage. The mathematical analysis is presented for possible percentage of energy shared to load by both the sources during each voltage level. The third work provides single phase multilevel inverter with improved fault tolerance in terms of switch open circuit failures and energy balancing between sources. Generally multilevel inverters for photovoltaic (PV) applications are fed ix with multiple voltage sources. For majority of the multilevel inverters the load shared to individual voltage sources is not equal due to inverter structure and switching combination. This leads to under-utilization of the voltage sources. To address this issue optimal PV module distribution for multilevel inverters is proposed. Mathematical analysis is carried out for optimal sharing of PV resources for each voltage source. The proposed source distribution strategy ensures better utilization of each voltage source, as well as minimizes the control complexity for energy balancing issues. This topology requires four isolated DC-sources with a voltage magnitude of Vdc/4 (where Vdc is the voltage requirement for the conventional NPC multilevel inverter). These isolated DC voltage sources are realized with multiple PV strings. The operation of proposed multilevel single phase inverter is analyzed for different switch open-circuit failures. All the presented topologies are simulated using MATLAB/Simulink and the results are verified with laboratory prototyp

A Fault-Tolerant T-Type Multilevel Inverter Topology With Increased Overload Capability and Soft-Switching Characteristics

he performance of a novel three-phase four-leg fault-tolerant T-type inverter topology is introduced in this paper. This inverter topology provides a fault-tolerant solution to any open-circuit and certain short-circuit switching faults in the power devices. During any of the fault-tolerant operation modes for these device faults, there is no derating required in the inverter output voltage or output power. In addition, overload capability is increased in this new T-type inverter compared to that in the conventional three-level T-type inverter. Such increase in inverter overload capability is due to the utilization of the redundant leg for overload current sharing with other main phase legs under healthy condition. Moreover, if the redundant phase leg is composed of silicon carbide metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistors, quasi-zero-voltage switching, and zero-current switching of the silicon insulated-gate bipolar transistors (IGBTs) in the conventional main phase legs can be achieved at certain switching states, which can significantly relieve the thermal stress on the outer IGBTs and improve the whole inverter efficiency. Simulation and experimental results are given to verify the efficacy and merits of this high-performance fault-tolerant T-type inverter topology

Distributed control of a fault tolerant modular multilevel inverter for direct-drive wind turbine grid interfacing

Modular generator and converter topologies are being pursued for large offshore wind turbines to achieve fault tolerance and high reliability. A centralized controller presents a single critical point of failure which has prevented a truly modular and fault tolerant system from being obtained. This study analyses the inverter circuit control requirements during normal operation and grid fault ride-through, and proposes a distributed controller design to allow inverter modules to operate independently of each other. All the modules independently estimate the grid voltage magnitude and position, and the modules are synchronised together over a CAN bus. The CAN bus is also used to interleave the PWM switching of the modules and synchronise the ADC sampling. The controller structure and algorithms are tested by laboratory experiments with respect to normal operation, initial synchronization to the grid, module fault tolerance and grid fault ride-through

Open-circuit fault resilient ability multi level inverter with reduced switch count for off grid applications

In a multi-level inverter (MLI), the switching component number effect on volume and reliability is a major concern in on-grid and off-grid applications. The recent trend in MLI, reduced component number of power switches, and capacitors in multi-level inverter topologies have been driven for power conversion. The concept of fault tolerance is not considered in many such configurations; due to this the reliability of the MLI is very low. So now it is a major research concern, to develop a strong fault resilient ability power electronic converter. In this work, a novel configuration of a multilevel inverter with a lower switch count is proposed and analyzed with fault tolerance operation for improvement of reliability. Generally, the fault-tolerant operation is analyzed in only any one of the switches in MLI. But the proposed topology is concerned with multiple switch fault tolerance. Further, the phase disposition pulse width modulation (PDPWM) control scheme is utilized for the operation of the proposed inverter topology. The proposed inverter topology is simulated in MATLAB/Simulink environment under normal and faulty condition; the results are obtained and validated

Advanced Silicon Carbide Based Fault-Tolerant Multilevel Converters

The number of safety-critical loads in electric power areas have been increasing drastically in the last two decades. These loads include the emerging more-electric aircraft (MEA), uninterruptible power supplies (UPS), high-power medical instruments, electric and hybrid electric vehicles (EV/HEV) and ships for military use, electric space rovers for space exploration and the like. This dissertation introduces two novel fault-tolerant three-level power converter topologies, named advanced three-level active neutral point clamped converter (A3L-ANPC) and advanced three-level active T-Type (A3L-ATT) converter. The goal of these converters is to increase the reliability of multilevel power converters used in safety-critical applications.These new fault-tolerant multilevel power converters are derived from the conventional ANPC and T-Type converter topologies. The topologies has significantly improved the fault-tolerant capability under any open circuit or certain short-circuit faults in the power semiconductor devices. In addition, under healthy conditions, the redundant phase leg can be utilized to share overload current with other main legs, which enhances the overload capability of the converter. The conduction losses in the power devices can be reduced by sharing the load current with the redundant leg. Moreover, unlike other existing fault-tolerant power converters in the literature, full output voltages can be always obtained during fault-tolerant operation. Experimental prototypes of both the A3L-ANPC and A3L-ATT converters were built based on Silicon Carbide (SiC) MOSFETs. Experimental results confirmed the anticipated performance of the novel three-level converter topologies.SiC MOSFET technology is at the forefront of significant advances in electric power conversion. SiC MOSFETs switch significantly faster than the conventional Silicon counterparts resulting in power converters with higher efficiency and increased switching frequencies. Low switching losses are one of the key characteristics of SiC technology. In this dissertation, hard and soft switching losses of a high power SiC MOSFET module are measured and characterized at different voltage and current operating points to determine the maximum operating frequency of the module. The purpose of characterizing the SiC MOSFET module is to determine the feasibility of very high frequency (200kHz-1MHz) power conversion which may not be possible to be implemented in the conventional Silicon based high power conversion. The results show that higher switching frequencies are achievable with soft switching techniques in high power converters

Analysis and implementation of power management and control strategy for six-phase multilevel ac drive system in fault condition

This research article exploits the power management algorithm in post-fault conditions for a six-phase (quad) multilevel inverter. The drive circuit consists of four 2-level, three-phase voltage source inverter (VSI) supplying a six-phase open-end windings motor or/impedance load, with circumstantial failure of one VSI investigated. A simplified level-shifted pulse-width modulation (PWM) algorithm is developed to modulate each couple of three-phase VSI as 3-level output voltage generators in normal operation. The total power of the whole ac drive is shared equally among the four isolated DC sources. The developed post-fault algorithm is applied when there is a fault by one VSI and the load is fed from the remaining three healthy VSIs. In faulty conditions the multilevel outputs are reduced from 3-level to 2-level, but still the system propagates with degraded power. Numerical simulation modelling and experimental tests have been carried out with proposed post-fault control algorithm with three-phase open-end (asymmetrical induction motor/R-L impedance) load. A complete set of simulation and experimental results provided in this paper shows close agreement with the developed theoretical background

A comparison of power conversion systems for modular battery-based energy storage systems

© 2020 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes,creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works.A modular battery-based energy storage system is composed by several battery packs distributed among different modules or parts of a power conversion system (PCS). The design of such PCS can be diverse attending to different criteria such as reliability, efficiency, fault tolerance, compactness and flexibility. The present paper proposes a quantitative and qualitative comparison among the most widely proposed PCSs for modular battery-based energy storage systems in literature. The obtained results confirm the high performance of those PCSs based on the parallel connection of different modules to a single point of common coupling, also identifying those based on modular multilevel cascaded converters as promising concepts according to the assumptions of the present paper.Postprint (author's final draft

Review of Five-Level Front-End Converters for Renewable Energy Applications

Provisional fileWith the objective of minimizing environment and energy issues, distributed renewable energy sources have reached remarkable advancements along the last decades, with special emphasis on wind and solar photovoltaic installations, which are deemed as the future of power generation in modern power systems. The integration of renewable energy sources into the power system requires the use of advanced power electronics converters, representing a challenge within the paradigm of smart grids, e.g., to improve efficiency, to obtain high power density, to guarantee fault-tolerance, to reduce the control complexity and to mitigate power quality problems. This paper presents a specific review about front-end converters for renewable energy applications (more specifically the power inverter that interfaces the renewable energy source with the power grid). It is important to note that the objective of this paper is not to cover all types of front-end converters; the focus is only on single-phase multilevel structures limited to five voltage levels, based on a voltage-source arrangement and allowing current or voltage feedback control. The established review is presented considering the following main classifications: (a) Number of passive and active power semiconductors; (b) Fault tolerance features; (c) Control complexity; (d) Requirements of specific passive components as capacitor or inductors; (e) Number of independent or split dc-link voltages. Throughout the paper, several specific five-level front-end topologies are presented and comparisons are made between them, highlighting the pros and cons of each one of them as a candidate for the interface of renewable energy sources with the power grid.Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia (FCT