Impact of Circulating Current Control in Capacitor Voltage Ripples of Modular Multilevel Converters under Grid Imbalances

Jinke Li*, Georgios Konstantinou, Harith R. Wickramasinghe, Josep Pou, Xuezhi Wu, Xinmin Jin

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

47 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

The negative-sequence current of a modular multilevel converter (MMC) under unbalanced ac grid conditions increases the voltage ripples of the submodule capacitors. This paper investigates the impact of circulating current control in capacitor voltage ripples under different unbalanced ac grid conditions, while considering multiple control objectives and independent control of active and reactive power. It is demonstrated that higher order harmonic injection in the circulating current through a reference calculation based on instantaneous information improves operation of the MMC reducing capacitor voltage ripples at the cost of increased peak arm current and dc current oscillations. The efficacy of the circulating current control is validated through real-time digital simulations of an 800 MVA benchmark MMC high-voltage direct current transmission system.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)1257-1267
Number of pages11
JournalIEEE Transactions on Power Delivery
Volume33
Issue number3
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Jun 2018
Externally publishedYes

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 1986-2012 IEEE.

ASJC Scopus Subject Areas

  • Energy Engineering and Power Technology
  • Electrical and Electronic Engineering

Keywords

  • capacitor voltage ripple
  • Circulating current control
  • modular multilevel converter (MMC)
  • unbalanced operation

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