Performance Comparison of Five-Level Active Neutral Point Converter Based on Phase Disposition-PWM and Alternate Phase Opposition Disposition-PWM

Abstract

The work in this paper presents the performance analysis of the reduced component count converter which is the 5-Level Active Neutral Point Converter (5LANPC). This 5-level converter has been configured by stacking the traditional 3-Level Neutral Point Converter with the Flying Capacitor converter. Two types of control algorithms were considered and compared to explore the performance of the 5LANPC. The first algorithm was based on the Phase-Disposition-Pulse Width Modulation (PD-PWM), while the second one was based on the Alternate Phase Opposition Disposition-Pulse Width Modulation (APOD-PWM). These algorithms are used to determine the required voltage level and according to the required level the state of the switches is selected through a simplified voltage balance algorithm. This voltage balance algorithm deals with the redundant switching states to maintain the voltages of the 5LANPC capacitors at a specified level. The comparison between these two modulation strategies was performed by simulation based on MATLAB/Simulink package. Simulation results showed compelling outcomes involving the two techniques concerning the voltage and current characteristics, as well as the equilibrium in the capacitor voltages. By comparing the simulation results, it was found that the performance of the system is relatively better using the PD-PWM strategy.