Compatible Selective Harmonic Elimination for Three-Phase Four-Wire NPC Inverter with DC-Link Capacitor Voltage Balancing

Abstract

In this paper a Compatible Selective Harmonic Elimination (CSHE)-PWM is designed for three-leg four-wire (3L/4W) Neutral Point Clamped (NPC) inverter. The proposed CSHE-PWM is capable of eliminating both triplen and non-triplen harmonics from phase voltages and empowers 3L/4W NPC to handle both single/three-phase and linear/nonlinear loads. It has been mathematically proved that DC capacitors self-voltage balancing is achieved thanks to direct control of phase voltage waveform symmetry. Moreover, the cancellation of specified triplen and non-triplen orders has the advantage of having low capacitors voltage ripple. Therefore, the applied technique not only helps removing one leg of the inverter that reduces associate complex calculations and switching losses, but also directly controls phase voltage harmonic profile compared to SHE-PWM for four-leg four-wire (4L/4W) NPC. CSHE-PWM is practically tested on a NPC inverter prototype to validate the efficient harmonic elimination from the phase voltage waveforms along with capacitors voltages balancing under symmetrical/asymmetrical loads.