DC transformer (DCT) is the key energy conversion equipment that converts medium voltage dc to low voltage dc. Aiming at the industrial loads requiring wide output voltage range and unidirectional power flow, a hybrid isolated DC transformer (HIT) as an alternative to the traditional MMC-DCT is proposed in this paper. It is composed by thyristors, diodes, and submodule (SM) based arms. The operation principle, circuit performance, and control strategy are introduced in detail. Particularly, a discontinuous input and continuous output currents (DICO) operation mode is further proposed to suppress submodule capacitor voltage ripple. Compared with the traditional MMC-DCT, HIT can save 50% SMs, 28% semiconductor cost and 46.3% total SM capacitance. The effectiveness and the theoretical analysis have been confirmed by both simulation and experimental results.
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