SYNOPSIS

For M.Tech. () IV Semester Project In

Board of Electrical engineering & Technology,
Rashtrasant Tukadoji Maharaj Nagpur University, Nagpur.
On
Control Strategy for Improved Dynamic
Performance of Variable-Speed Drives With
Modular Multilevel Converter

Submitted by
Mr.

Under the Guidance of

Professor
Mr.
P. G. Department of Electrical Engineering,
B. D. College of Engineering, Sewagram, Wardha
September 2016
1

INDEX

SR. NO.

CONTENTS

PAGE NO.

1.

Introduction

1-2

2.

Motivation

3.

Literature Review

3-4

4.

Problem Definition

5.

Objective

6.

Proposed Methodology

7.

Work Plan

8.

Available Tools

9.

References

5-6

ABSTRACT

This paper presents a control scheme for the modular multilevel converter (MMC) to drive a
variable-speed ac machine, especially focusing on improving dynamic performance.
Theoretically, the energy balance in the MMC cell capacitors is prone to be unstable at start-up
and low-frequency operations. In addition, the MMC topology essentially requires advanced
control strategies to balance energy and suppress the voltage pulsation of each cell capacitor.
This paper proposes a control strategy for the robust dynamic response of MMC even at zero
output frequency employing leg offset voltage injection. The leg offset voltage for balancing the
arm energy is produced by direct

calculation without the circulating current control loop

controller. Thanks to the highly dynamic leg offset voltage from direct calculation and not
conventional circulating current controller, the dynamic performance of an MMC at low speeds
has conspicuously improved. The ac machine has been driven from standstill to rated speed
without excessive cell capacitor voltage ripples utilizing this proposed strategy. The simulation
and experimental results verify that stable operation is guaranteed down to <2% of the rated
speed under 40% step load torque disturbance.

1. INTRODUCTION

Fig. 1. Circuit configuration of the MMC.

Fig. 1 shows the circuit configuration of an MMC. This topology needs to be controlled
by extra balancing strategies. As shown in Fig. 1, since the upper and lower arm currents
flow through cells in each arm, the corresponding arm currents cause fundamental
periodic pulsations of cell capacitor voltages. The voltage pulsation of each cells
capacitor is mostly affected by the output phase current and output frequency.
Theoretically, the magnitude of the cell voltage fluctuation is proportional to magnitude
4

of the output phase current and inversely proportional to operating frequency [6]. For this
reason, special effort is demanded to drive the ac machine through MMC, which requires
considerable starting torque and low-speed steady state operation. In recent studies of
[7][9] and [16], the principles and algorithms for ac motor drives with the MMC have
been introduced. However, they did not address the actual control strategies, such as
changing output frequency, including standstill and covering load torque disturbance.
Principles.
The energy balancing control is one of the main issues of an MMC system. In
many literatures [6][10], the energy balancing controls of an MMC that uses circulating
current control and modulation scheme have been introduced. The leg offset voltage is
used to regulate the circulating current and has little effect on ac and dc terminal voltages.
The conventional balancing controls need the circulating current controller that produces
the leg offset voltage reference from the input of circulating current references using the
proportional

2. MOTIVATION
Fully modular converters benefit from several advantages such as:
1) The ability to control the voltage and current stresses applied to their components
through incorporation of identical modules in series or parallel.
2) Enhanced reliability through installation of redundant modules.
3) Reduced design, manufacturing installation, and maintenance costs due to
standardization of the overall product cycle.
4) Higher power density due to minimized input and output current ripples through
interleaving schemes.
In this paper, a modular multilevel dcdc converter topology is developed.
Though targeted for medium-voltage applications, examination of the topologys
capabilities shows that it may be employed as a multiple-input and/or multiple-output
converter, thus making variants of the converter suitable for low-power applications as
well.

3. LITERATURE REVIEW
1)

M. Hagiwara, I. Hasegawa, and H. Akagi, Start-up and low-speed operation of an electric

motor driven by a modular multilevel cascade inverter, IEEE Trans. Ind. Appl., vol. 49,
no. 4, pp. 15561565, Jul./Aug. 2013..
This paper describes startup and low-speed operation of an electric motor driven by a
modular multilevel cascade inverter based on double-star chopper-cells (MMCIDSCC).
This paper proposes a square-wave method to suppress the peak circulating current.
Theoretical analysis developed in this paper reveals that the peak circulating current
when using the square-wave method gets smaller by 50% than that when using the
sinusoidal-wave method proposed in the previous work. Experimental results obtained
from a 400-V 15-kW downscaled system verify that stable operation is achieved at an
ultra-low speed of 17 min1 with a load torque of L = 40%, as well as three-phase dccurrent feeding operation. Moreover, the motor can start up from a standstill without
producing any overvoltage or overcurrent.
This paper has described the startup and low-speed performance of an electric motor
driven by a modular multilevel cascade inverter (MMCI-DSCC). Stable operation has
been achieved using a square-wave method, which involves the injection of a squarewave common-mode voltage and a circulating current into each leg. It has been shown
that the motor can start up from a standstill without producing any overvoltage and/or
overcurrent. The validity of the control method has been verified experimentally by using
a 400-V 15-kW downscaled system..
.

2) A. Antonopoulos, L. Angquist, S. Norrga, K. Ilves, and H.-P. Nee, Modular multilevel

converter AC motor drives with constant torque form zero to nominal speed, in Proc.
IEEE ECCE, Sep. 2012, pp. 739746..
Modular multilevel converters (M2Cs) are shown to have a great potential in the area of
medium-voltage drives. Low-distortion output quantities, combined with low average

switching frequencies for the semiconductor devices create the ideal combination for
very high-efficiency drives, both from an electric motor and an inverter point of view.
With M2Cs the output voltage has such a low harmonic content that high-power motors
can be operated without any derating. However, the large number of devices and the
existence of capacitors that have to conduct the fundamental frequency current, requires
more complex converter control techniques than its two-level counterpart. Special care
needs to be taken under starting and operation with low frequency, where the lowfrequency current may cause significant unbalance between the submodule capacitor
voltages, disturb the output waveforms, and eventually cause the converter to trip. In this
paper, principles for converter operation with high torque in the whole speed range, from
standstill to rated speed will be investigated. The converter-control method utilizes
estimation of the capacitor voltage variation, based on equations describing steady-state
conditions. Experimental results from a down-scaled 12 kVA prototype converter running
a loaded motor from zero up to the rated speed are provided in the paper.

3) J.-J. Jung, H.-J. Lee, and S.-K. Sul, Control of the modular multilevel converter for

variable-speed drives, in Proc. IEEE Int. Conf. PEDES, Dec. 2012, pp. 16.
This paper presents a control strategy of the entire frequency range operation for Modular
Multilevel Converter (MMC), especially focusing on variable speed drive of an AC
machine. The structure of MMC essentially requires energy balancing control so as to
mitigate the voltage pulsation of each cell capacitor in converter arms. In the proposed
control strategy, two operation modes are employed. One is a low frequency operation
mode for start-up and low speed operation of the AC machine, and the other is a normal
frequency operation mode from medium to rated speed of the AC machine. To reduce the
pulsation, this paper proposes the energy balancing control strategies at each operation
mode. Theoretically, the energy

balancing control of the capacitors is prone to be

unstable at low frequency operation. In order to prevent the instability, a special control
strategy is introduced. The strategy exploits a common mode voltage and a circulating
current with high frequency component in low frequency operation mode. With the
8

proposed control scheme, the speed control range of the AC machine driven by MMC can
be down to zero speed without instability of voltage of the cell capacitors. Experimental
results for the energy balancing control are shown to demonstrate the effectiveness of the
proposed control strategy..
.

4) X. Shi, Z. Wang, L. M. Tolbert, and F. Wang, A comparison of phase disposition and

phase shift PWM strategies for modular multilevel converters, in Proc. IEEE ECCE, Sep.
2013, pp. 40894096..
Modular Multilevel Converter (MMC) has proved to be an effective solution for high
power applications, supplying low distorted output voltage and high fault tolerance. This
paper presents a detailed performance comparison between phase disposition PWM
(PDPWM) and phase shift PWM (PSPWM) schemes under normal condition, overmodulation, as well as carrier non-synchronization condition. Compared to the PSPWM
strategy, the PDPWM has smaller line-to-line voltage distortion under normal condition,
when the carrier frequencies are adjusted to achieve the same number of switch
transitions over one fundamental cycle. In addition, the capacitor voltages are able
to keep balanced without additional controllers. Under overmodulation

condition,

PDPWM can still achieve smaller voltage distortion without capacitor voltage deviation,
while obvious voltage differences are observed with PSPWM, which shows an opposite
trend toward that of normal condition. Moreover, asynchronous carriers have different
impacts on the harmonic cancellation, which needs to be carefully considered in a
hardware implementation. Simulation results for a three-phase nine-level inverter system
generated with the Matlab/Simulink software are provided to support the theoretical
considerations.
.

4. PROBLEM DEFINITION
The use of an MMC makes it possible to save bulky reactive components in a mediumvoltage motor drive application, such as a line-transformer, harmonic filter, and dc-link
reactor. Compared with conventional medium voltage source converters, the MMC has a
modular structure made up of identical converter cells. Because it can easily provide
higher number of voltage level for medium voltage applications, the quality of the output
voltage waveform is better. In addition, because of the modular structure it has
advantages, such a easy maintenance and assembly. The energy balancing control is one
of the main issues on an MMC system. In many literatures the energy balancing controls
of an MMC that uses circulating current control and modulation scheme have been
introduced. The leg offset voltage is used to regulate the circulating current and has little
effect on ac and dc terminal voltages. The conventional balancing controls need the
circulating current controller that produces the leg offset voltage reference from the input
of circulating current references using the proportional and integral (PI) or the
proportional and resonant controller. The performance of the circulating current controller
has detrimental effects on the dynamics and complexity of the balancing control.

5. OBJECTIVE
10

1) To improve the balancing performance by increasing bandwidth of the balancing

controller, this paper proposes a balancing control method without the circulating current
controller. Therefore, in the view point of capacitor voltage balancing, the leg offset
voltage can be directly obtained with no phase delay due to the circulating current
controller. Therefore, the bandwidth of balancing controller based on the direct voltage
injection method can be extended more than that based on the circulating current
controller.
2) Higher power density due to minimized input and output current ripples through
interleaving schemes.
3) Improvement Distorted current.
4) Implementation of Sinusoidal Leg Offset Voltage Injection.

6. PROPOSED METHODOLOGY
11

The capacitor power difference between the upper and lower arm, which is
derived as (12) from (8) and (9), affects the cell capacitor voltage balance of the arms.
The first two terms on the right-hand side in (12), 0.5Vdcixs2v

xsixo, have

considerable dc or very low-frequency components. Thus, when the output frequency is

dc or very low, the voltage difference between the arms will diverge due to this low
frequency
strategy exploiting the common mode voltage, vsn, was used in this paper. The
common mode voltage can be regarded as an additional degree of freedom for
controllability since the common mode voltage does not affect the line-to-line output
voltage. It is natural to select the frequency of the common mode voltage as a high
frequency to minimize the cell capacitor voltage fluctuations. In addition, since the
circulating current, ixo, is also a controllable element that does not affect the output phase
current, a high-frequency component can be superimposed on the circulating current.
Hence, the third term on the right-hand side in (12), 2v snixo can be used to balance the
power of arms with the highfrequency components in vsn and ixo. For convenience, the
low- and high-frequency elements can be segregated from ixo and vsn as (13) and (14),
where ~ and ^ refer to the low and
high-frequency components, respectively but in many practical applications, they
may also contain additional harmonic components such as a third-order harmonic in
order to increase the maximum possible modulation index. The insertion indices can also
be adjusted in order to compensate for the capacitor voltage ripple or inject harmonic
components in the circulating current. However, in order to simplify the analysis, it is
assumed that the insertion indices are sinusoidal waveforms with dc-offsets.

12

Fig. 2. Proposed control scheme for variable-speed drives. (a) Sinusoidal wave voltage
injection method. (b) Square wave voltage injection method. W is weighting factor for
switchover, which is described in Section III-C.

Fig. 4. Proposed overall control scheme for variable-speed drives.

Fig. 4 shows the overall controller for the entire frequency operation from standstill to
normal frequency mode. First, the averaging controller carries out regulating the leg
power, which is the difference between dc-link input power and ac output power. The leg
power is calculated as (25) by adding (8) and (9) Because the low-frequency power
component in (25) should be nullified as in (26), the controller output has dc and second
order harmonic frequency components as described in (27

13

7. WORK PLAN

Following are the steps required for successful completion of this project.
SR.

STEP

DAYS

NO.
1.

Detail study of some more papers

REQUIRED
20

2.

Study of tools

20

3.

Implementing the MMC

30

4.

By the proposed algorithm As per MMC requirement

20

5.

Implementing the Simulation in MATLAB

20

6.

Comparison of implemented simulation result with the proposed 20

7.

methodology.
Result analysis

20

8.

Thesis writing

30

8. Available Tools

1) MATLAB

9. Implication
14

A control strategy for variable-speed ac motor drives based on MMC has been presented. To
overcome the difficulties of the power balance between cells and arms of MMC over wide
operation speed ranges, a direct leg offset voltage injection method has been devised.
Utilizing the proposed method, the ripple voltage of each cell of MMC has been kept within
allowable bounds under the sudden application of 40% of rated load torque at the extremely
low frequency, 1 Hz, which is <2% of rated frequency. Based on the simulation and
experimental results, it can be noted that the control performance of the upper and lower arm
energy ripple by the proposed leg offset voltage injection method is better than that by the
conventional circulating current injection method with the inner loop. In addition, the
variable speed ac motor drive has been proven to work based on the switchover tactic by
testing the overall speed including standstill..

10. REFERENCES
15

[1] M. Hagiwara, I. Hasegawa, and H. Akagi, Start-up and low-speed operation of an electric
motor driven by a modular multilevel cascade inverter, IEEE Trans. Ind. Appl., vol. 49, no. 4,
pp. 15561565, Jul./Aug. 2013.
[2] 2) A. Antonopoulos, L. Angquist, S. Norrga, K. Ilves, and H.-P. Nee, Modular multilevel
converter AC motor drives with constant torque form zero to nominal speed, in Proc. IEEE
ECCE, Sep. 2012, pp. 739746..
[3] D. Peftitsis, G. Tolstoy, A. Antonopoulos, J. Rabkowski, J.-K. Lim, M. Bakowski, L. A
ngquist, and H.-P. Nee, High-power modular multilevel converters with SiC JFETs, in Proc.
IEEE Energy Convers. Congr. Expo., Sep. 2010.
[4] M. Hiller, D. Krug, R. Sommer, and S. Rohner, A new highly modular medium voltage
converter topology for industrial drive applications, in Proc. Eur. Conf. Power Electron. Appl.,
Sep. 2009.
[5] A. Antonopoulos, K. Ilves, L. A ng quist, and H.-P. Nee, On interaction between internal
converter dynamics and current control of high performance high-power ac motor drives with
modular multilevel converters, in Proc. IEEE Energy Convers. Congr. Expo., Sep. 2010.
[6] M. Hagiwara, K. Nishimura, and H. Akagi, A medium-voltage motor drive with a modular
multilevel PWMinverter, IEEE Trans. Power Electron., vol. 25, no. 7, pp. 17861799, Jul.
2010.
[7] A. J. Korn, M. Winkelnkemper, and P. Steimer, Low output frequency operation of the
modular multi-level converter, in Proc. IEEE Energy Convers. Congr. Expo., Sep. 2010.
[8] M.Winkelnkemper, A. Korn, and P. Steimer, A modular direct converter for transformerless
rail interties, in Proc. IEEE Int. Ind. Electron. Symp., Jul. 2010.
[9] L. A ngquist, A. Haider, H.-P. Nee, and H. Jiang, Open-loop approach to control a modular
multilevel frequency converter, in Proc. Eur. Conf. Power Electron. Appl., Aug./Sep. 2011.

16

Name and Signature of Student

Name & Signature of

Name & Signature of

Guide and Co-Guide

PG Coordinator

17