Leakage Current Suppression With Capacitor Voltage Control of Three-Level Flying Capacitor Grid-Connected Inverters

Abstract

Leakage current issues are worthy of attention for nonisolated grid-connected systems. This article introduces the method of eliminating common-mode (CM) voltage and reducing the leakage current based on modulation, and analyzes the correlation between actual effects of the method and the flying capacitor (FC) voltage balance in three-phase three-level FC grid-connected inverter. The proposed carrier-based modulation can balance the FC voltage by changing the transmission sequences of pulses and theoretically achieve zero CM voltage. In order to deal with the low frequency fluctuation and bias voltage of FC caused by asymmetry of actual hardware, the control method is introduced, which controls FC voltage by changing the action times’ distribution of switches, while still eliminating the CM voltage. Simulation and experimental results are provided to validate that the proposed method can control FC voltage and achieve good performance in suppressions of CM voltage, leakage, current and CM electromagnetic interference noise.