Abstract
The increasing penetration of Wind Power Plants (WPPs) has several impacts on the power system operation, such as voltage instability. Under such conditions, the literature suggests the use of static synchronous compensators (STATCOMs). Additionally, the Modular Multilevel Converter (MMC) is featured as a very suitable topology for STATCOM application. Therefore, this paper contributes to the knowledge in the field by analyzing the effect of the modulation strategies in losses and lifetime of a 17 MVA MMC-STATCOM. These analyses use two well-know modulation strategies: Phase-Shifted Pulse-Width Modulation (PS-PWM) and Nearest-Level Control (NLC). The results indicate that both strategies have similar conduction losses, although PS-PWM has almost twice more switching losses. As a result, the PS-PWM has annual energy consumption 31.4% higher than NLC. Regarding the lifetime evaluation, the results show superior performance for the NLC, for cell-level and system-level, with lifetime 25.6 and 10.6 times longer than PS-PWM, respectively.
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