Structure and the space vector modulation for a medium‐voltage power‐electronic‐transformer based on two seven‐level cascade H‐bridge inverters

Abstract

This study presents the structure and the space vector pulse-width modulation (SVPWM) for power electronic transformer (PET) based on two seven-level cascade H-bridge (CHB) inverters. The DC links of CHB inverters are coupled with nine dual-active bridge (DAB) converters with medium-frequency transformers. The DC-link voltages are equalised with two methods - through the control of DAB voltages and through the modulation strategy applied to both CHB inverters. In the proposed SVPWM, the influence of vector sequences on predicted DC-link voltages is analysed, and the optimum vector sequence is selected to equalise them. Regardless of this, the proposed SVPWM strategy enables the proper generation of output voltage vector also in the case of DC-link voltage imbalance - the calculation of the space-vector area takes into consideration the inequality of the DC-link voltages and its influence on the lengths and positions of active vectors. To simplify the modulation algorithm, the multilevel CHB inverter is considered as a set of three-level inverters connected in series. Each of them is controlled using the same SVPWM algorithm. The proposed modulation method reuses the H-bridges with zero duty cycles determined in the initial stages of the output voltage generation process. This enables the optimal management of the DC-link voltage distribution. The experimental research was carried out on a 600 kW/3.3 kV PET. The results are presented in this study.