In this research work, design and implementation of a 154 kV, ± 50 MVAr Transmission STATCOM (T-STATCOM) has been carried out primarily for the purposes of reactive power compensation and terminal voltage regulation, and secondarily for power system stability. The implemented T-STATCOM consists of five 10.5 kV, ±12 MVAr Cascaded Multilevel Converter (CMC) modules operating in parallel. The power stage of each CMC is composed of five series connected H-Bridges (HB) in each phase, thus resulting in 21-level line-to-line voltages. Due to modularity and flexibility of implemented HBs, a CMC module power density of 250kVAr/m 3 is reached, thus making the mobility of the system implementable. DC link capacitor voltages of HBs are perfectly balanced by means of the Modified Selective Swapping Algorithm proposed. The field tests carried out at full load in the 154 kV transformer substation where T-STATCOM is installed and put into service have shown that the steady-state and transient responses of the system are quite satisfactory.

In this paper, a fully digital controller based on multiple digital signal processor (DSP) and field-programmable gate array (FPGA) boards has been proposed for parallel-operated cascaded multilevel converters (CMC) used in flexible AC transmission system (FACTS) applications. The proposed system is composed of a DSP-based master controller in combination with a multiple number of slave DSP boards, FPGA boards, microcontrollers, a programmable logic controller (PLC), an industrial computer, and their peripherals in interaction. Intercommunication of these digital controllers is achieved mainly through fiber-optic links, via synchronous serial data link wherever a high-speed, full duplex communication is needed, and via asynchronous serial communication interface wherever relatively slow communication speed is required. The proposed fully-digital control system has been implemented on a sample 11-level CMC-based 154-kV, + 50-MVAr transmission type static synchronous compensator (T-STATCOM). Field test results have shown that the proposed fully digital control system provides good transient response and steady-state characteristics for the oveall system including protection and monitoring functions.Index Terms-Cascaded multilevel converter (CMC), digital controller, digital signal processor (DSP), field-programmable gate array (FPGA), transmission type static synchronous compensator (T-STATCOM).

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