Power Routing for Cascaded H-Bridge Converters

2018 IEEE Applied Power Electronics Conference and Exposition (APEC)

Liserre

et al. 2018

Self Cite

Abstract-Smart Transformers (ST) are a potential solution for installing intelligent nodes in the electrical distribution grid, which can provide DC connectivity and are capable of providing grid services the traditional low-frequency transformers was not able to provide. However, the reliability of STs is one of the main challenges, limiting its application. To improve the reliability of STs, it is proposed to control the power in a modular ST architecture in order to control the remaining lifetime of its building blocks. Therefore, unequal power sharing through the cells based on the remaining useful lifetime, known as power routing, has been proposed for different converter topologies. However, existing literature has not investigated the impact of power routing on the ST on a system level. This paper focuses on the design and implementation of lifetime-based power routing control based on virtual resistances tailored for an ST consisting of Cascaded H-bridge (CHB) and Dual-Active Bridge (DAB) converters.

Section: B Impact Of Power Routing On Chb and Dab Topologymentioning

confidence: 98%

“…Power routing strategy has been implemented on the CHB in [9]. It is evident that the total losses of the power semiconductors do not vary much with unequal power sharing for the CHB.…”

Section: B Impact Of Power Routing On Chb and Dab Topologymentioning

confidence: 99%

Lifetime-based power routing of smart transformer with CHB and DAB converters

Raveendran

2018 IEEE Applied Power Electronics Conference and Exposition (APEC)

Liserre

et al. 2018

Self Cite

“…In order to comply with the regulations, this may require an over-designed filter. The power routing method in the modular converters was presented to redistribute the thermal stress among the cells depending on the expected remaining lifetime [18], [19]. The thermal cycling of a cell with lower expected lifetime can be reduced at the expense of increased stress for the other cells, which might not always be accepted.…”

Section: Thermally Compensated Discontinuous Modulation Strategy For mentioning

confidence: 99%

Thermally Compensated Discontinuous Modulation Strategy for Cascaded H-Bridge Converters

IEEE Trans. Power Electron.

Buticchi

2018

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Abstract-A widely adopted multilevel converter topology is the cascaded H-bridge (CHB), as it can provide voltage and power scalability. However, since the CHB converter can be composed by cells with different remaining lifetime, it could be useful to delay a fault of higher aged cells in order to prolong the entire converter's lifetime. In this paper, a thermally compensated discontinuous pulse width modulation (DPWM) strategy is proposed in order to reduce the thermal stress for power semiconductors in power modules of higher aged cells. Considering the thermal cycles as the most influencing cause of wear out of power modules, the proposed method compensates the thermal cycles under a varying power profile by manipulating the clamping angle of the DPWM. Moreover, the proposed method obtains a comparable total harmonic distortion performance to the phase-shifted carrier modulation.Index Terms-Active thermal control, cascaded H-bridge (CHB), discontinuous pulse width modulation (DPWM), multilevel converter, reliability.

“…The proposed approach is not to shut down modules, but to route the power along different paths in partial load operation [7], [8], [9]. This enables to control the lifetime of the system and to extend the operation time for modules with high accumulated damage, which can be estimated with condition monitoring techniques.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Lifetime-Based Power Routing in Parallel Converters for Smart Transformer Application

IEEE Trans. Ind. Electron.

Raveendran

Buticchi

et al. 2018

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Abstract-The use of a Smart Transformer-based electrical distribution could be an effective approach to reorganize the electric grid, solving the problems and challenges of distributed generation systems and active loads. While lower efficiency and higher cost compared to the conventional transformer are well known and investigated limiting factors, the required higher maintenance, related to the use of electronics systems in the electric grid, is seldom targeted. In fact, high maintenance cost would make the use of Smart Transformer inapplicable even if new services could justify higher initial cost and new semiconductor development could increase the overall efficiency. This work proposes a modular repairable system based on condition monitoring, which aims at equalizing the lifetime consumption of the single modules to make possible prognostic maintenance.