A modular power electronic transformer based on a cascaded H-bridge multilevel converter

Abstract

In this paper a modular power electronic transformer (PET) for feeding critical loads is presented. The PE-based transformer is a multi-cellular step-down converter that can directly connect to medium voltage levels on the primary side and provide a low voltage, highly stable interface for consumer applications. The presented structure consists of three stages: a cascaded H-bridge (CHB) rectifier, an isolation stage, and an output stage. The CHB rectifier serves as an active rectifier to ensure that the input current is sinusoidal, and it converts the high AC input voltage to low DC voltages. The isolated DC/DC converters are then connected to the DC links and provide galvanic isolation between the HV and LV sides. Finally, a three-phase inverter generates the AC output with the desired amplitude and frequency. This paper introduces a new control strategy to maintain DC voltage balance among the CHB converter cells, even if the attached loads are different. The effects of voltage offsets and device mismatches on the equal load-current sharing are investigated, and an active load-current sharing method is presented to balance the load power among the parallel-output cells. The validity of the proposed controllers and the PET performance are verified by simulation and experimental results.