Design of BDC for Multi-Level Inverter based VSI
2023 IEEE International Conference on Power Electronics, Smart Grid, and Renewable Energy (PESGRE) | 979-8-3503-1057-3/23/$31.00 ©2023 IEEE | DOI: 10.1109/PESGRE58662.2023.10404819
for ESS-STATCOM Applications
Afsher P A
Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering
Government College of Engineering Kannur
APJ Abdul Kalam Technological University
Kerala, India
afsherpa@gmail.com
Abstract—This work introduces a new bidirectional converter
for a voltage source inverter based on a multi-level inverter for an
energy storage system static compensator application. The pro-
posed BDC has the inherent property of balanced output voltage,
low input current ripple, and high voltage conversion gain ratio
with low component counts compared to the conventional BDC
topologies. The different stages of the converter derivation have
been explained, followed by the converter operation principle.
Finally, with the aid of the simulation results, the operation of
the proposed converter’s design is validated.
Index Terms—Battery, Bidirectional converter, ESS-
STATCOM, multi-level inverter, low device count
I. I NTRODUCTION
T HE world highly recommends energy generation from
renewable energy sources (RES) due to unpredictable
climatic and environmental changes. As a result, the penetra-
tion of RES in the power system has tremendously increased.
Moreover, the power grid is highly sensitive to power quality
(PQ) issues due to the intermittency nature of RES, such
as photovoltaic (PV) and wind power plants. Accordingly, a
parallel connected static compensator (STATCOM) is a well-
suited solution for most PQ issues like harmonics, unbalance,
and low power factor in the power system [1]-[2]. Although
the STATCOM addresses the problems mentioned earlier, the
active power support and the smoothening of power fluctuation
generated by the RES are not possible. In such a situation, the
use of an Energy Storage System (ESS) has become extremely
important, giving rise to the concept of an ESS-STATCOM,
which is essentially a single entity that can provide the
functionalities of a STATCOM and is also capable of supplying
real power to the system [3]-[5].
The voltage source inverters (VSIs), utilized in the ESS-
STATCOM for medium and high-power applications, are
multilevel compared to two-level inverters in low-power appli-
cations. Thus, the three-level three-leg neutral point clamped
(NPC) VSI is used to implement the topology for ESS-
STATCOM, which is most frequently used for medium power
applications [3]. The bidirectional dc-dc converter (BDC) is
Centre for Research and Development (CERD) of APJ Abdul Kalam
Technological University
979-8-3503-1057-3/23/$31.00 ©2023 IEEE.
Authorized licensed use limited to: NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY WARANGAL. Downloaded on May 28,2024 at 15:22:29 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
Manoj Kumar M V
Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering
Government College of Engineering Kannur
APJ Abdul Kalam Technological University
Kerala, India
manoj@gcek.ac.in
the crucial component that connects the ESS with the three-
level, three-leg NPC of the ESS-STATCOM. The most often
used architecture is seen in Fig. 1(a), where each split dc-link
capacitor of ESS-STATCOM has a separate conventional BDC
converter arrangement. The following are the most typical
issues with the conventional method for the ESS-STATCOM
[3].
• Difficulty in the ESS-coordinated STATCOM’s control of
BDCs.
• Inequitable ESS system discharge across several BDCs.
• More power switches and the circuitry that governs them.
Designing a BDC converter for ESS-STATCOM that re-
solves the aforementioned problems is thus a research chal-
lenge. Based on this concept, studies are being conducted on
BDC converters, which have the capacity to connect ESS with
NPC type VSIs [6] – [11].
The switched capacitor approach is employed in [6] using
an interleaved design. The current ripple on the battery side is
decreased by using an interleaved arrangement. However, the
number of interleaving phases impacts the input current ripple
on the battery side. Moreover, the greatest difficulty with in-
terleaved dc-dc converters is the requirement for more compo-
nents, particularly power switches. An expandable module of
a switched capacitor switched inductor converter is suggested
in [7] for better gain. However, a high number of switching
devices makes them bulky, increasing the parasitic effect and
lowering efficiency. The low voltage side switches can endure
high current loads because of their substantial voltage gains.
To further decrease the current ripple on the low voltage
side, [8] presents the BDC with interleaved connections at the
battery side of the converter. It uses the switched capacitor
approach to boost the voltage conversion gain. Their use is
restricted in low-power applications due to current spikes that
occur when capacitor operations are swapped during charging
and discharging. A non-isolated BDC converter made up of a
voltage doubler rectifier, and a resonant network is presented
in [9]. The suggested converter functions with zero-voltage
switching on the main side and zero-current switching on the
secondary side. Low switching loss leads to a considerably
enhanced converter efficiency. However, the CLC network is
 Fig. 1. (a) Conventional BDC for ESS-STATCOM application in Power System [3] (b) Proposed BDC for ESS-STATCOM application in Power System
used to actualize the converter’s structure, which increases
the number of passive components and makes them bulkier.
A coupled inductor-based BDC is suggested in [10] with
increased voltage conversion gain, reduced voltage stresses,
current sharing, and current ripple cancellation. It takes certain
configurations with clamp circuits to minimize the influence
of the leakage inductance caused by coupled inductors, which
raises the component count and, consequently, the conduction
losses. A BDC with ultra-high voltage gain that minimises core
saturation and parasitic component issues has been presented
in [11]. Even though the converter architecture has more
control switches, different switching combinations are chosen
for step-up and step-down to lower switching and conduction
losses.
Although the topologies mentioned above have excellent
gains, their usage is constrained to low-power applications,
they suffer with more components, and they have problems
sustaining balanced voltage in NPC capacitors. This article
addresses these issues with a bidirectional converter designed
and proposed with the below features;
• A low component count and a good voltage conversion
Authorized licensed use limited to: NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY WARANGAL. Downloaded on May 28,2024 at 15:22:29 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
ratio.
• Reduced low voltage side current ripple.
• Inherently obtaining balanced voltage across the NPC
capacitors with the proposed converter’s operation leads
to a simple control technique.
This article’s remaining sections are arranged as follows:
Section II shows the proposed converter topology derivation
and modes of operation. The converter analysis is presented
in Section III. Section IV describes the outcomes using simu-
lation results and ensuing conclusions in Section V.
II. BDC T OPOLOGY D ERIVATION AND O PERATIONS
This section gives an overview of circuit operation and
design by illustrating how the proposed BDC configuration
was derived from the SEPIC converter (SC) based BDC and
Cuk converter (CC) based BDC, which then incorporate the
properties discussed earlier.
A. Topology Derivation of Proposed BDC
Firstly, the SC based BDC and CC based BDC have been
taken as the base for the proposed BDC derivation. As depicted
 Fig. 2. Proposed BDC topology derivation

Fig. 3. Modes of operation and corresponding waveforms of the proposed BDC

Authorized licensed use limited to: NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY WARANGAL. Downloaded on May 28,2024 at 15:22:29 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
 in Fig. 2, the various steps in the circuit derivation are
addressed as follows;
(i) SC-based and CC-based BDC are initially considered
for the proposed BDC topology derivation. The proposed BDC
thus adopts a structure where the top section resembles the SC-
BDC characteristics, and the bottom section resembles those
of the CC-BDC.
(ii) The CC-BDC is turned around to produce a non-
inverting output voltage on the boost side. To obtain the reverse
CC-BDC, the drain and source terminals of the power switches
(S¯X and S3 ,) are reversed, and inductors (L¯1 and L3 ,) and the
capacitor (C3 ) are placed in the current’s reverse path as that
of CC-BDC.
(iii) Through the use of a single switching node, SC-BDC
and inverted CC-BDC are merged. Thus, the power switches
SX and S¯X are combined to have S1 as common node control Fig. 4. Voltage convertion gain: Proposed converter and conventional BDC
converter
device as shown in Fig. 2 (iii).
(iv) Finally, the parallel connected input inductors (La and
L¯a ) as shown in Fig. 2 (iii), are combined to get the equivalent III. D ESIGN AND C OMPONENT S ELECTION OF P ROPOSED
inductance effect by replacing it with an inductor (L1 ). The BDC
proposed BDC’s final configuration is obtained and shown in
The proposed BDC converter configuration is shown in Fig.
Fig. 2 (iv).
4 which consists of an input battery system in the LVS, the
B. Modes of Operations control switches (S1 , S2 , S3 ), inductor (L1 , L2 , L3 ), coupling
capacitor (C1 , C2 ) and the output capacitors (Co1 , Co2 ). The
The proposed BDC converter configuration consists of an
main features are low input current ripple, inherent output
input battery system in the LVS, the control switches (S1 , S2 ,
voltage balance, high voltage conversion gain (VCG) and the
S3 ), inductor (L1 , L2 , L3 ), coupling capacitor (C1 , C2 ) and
common grounding for both the LVS and HVS eases their
the output capacitors (Co1 , Co2 ).
isolation and gate driver requirements. The proposed converter
In this section, the circuit’s discharging and charging modes
voltage conversion ratio during discharging mode is given as
are described in detail. During the discharging mode, the
follows:
circuit operates as a step-up converter and as a step-down con-
verter during charging mode. The various mode of operations Vo1 + Vo2 2D
and the relevant waveforms for each mode are shown in Fig. = (1)
Vbat (1 − D)
3.
On the other hand, the voltage conversion ratio during
(i) Discharging Mode I: Energy from the input ESS is stored
charging mode is given as follows:
in the inductor (L1 ) when the switch (S1 ) is conducting. While
the inductors (L2 and L3 ) store energy following the discharge Vo1 + Vo2 (1 − D)
= (2)
of coupling capacitors (C1 and C2 ). During this mode, the Vbat 2D
power switches S2 and S3 are both OFF. The relation between the VCG and the duty cycle for
(ii) Discharging Mode II: Switch S1 is OFF in this operating the proposed BDC and the conventional BDC derived from
mode, whereas switches S2 and S3 are both ON. Through the the boost converter during discharging and charging mode
switches, S2 and S3 , the energy stored in the inductor L1 are is illustrated in Fig. 4. The proposed BDC outperforms the
used to charge the capacitors C1 and C2 . Utilizing the energy conventional BDC significantly in terms of VCG. Additionally,
retained in the inductors L2 and L3 , the output capacitors Co1 both BDCs have the same gain at 0.5 duty cycles. The
and Co2 are subsequently charged. proposed BDC’s VCG increases exponentially at a high rate
(iii) Charging Mode I: When the switch S1 is conducting, relative to the conventional BDC during discharging mode
the stored energy in the inductor L1 is utilized to recharge after 0.5 duty cycles. For charging mode, the proposed BDC
the ESS. A part of the energy is also utilized to charge the has a wide range for the duty cycle selection compared to the
coupling capacitor C1 and C2 . The output capacitor Co1 and conventional BDC.
Co2 also charges utilizing the energy in the inductor L2 and The input inductor (L1 ) value is given as follows:
L3 .Both the power switches S2 and S3 are in OFF condition.
Vbat D
(iv) Charging Mode II: In this operating mode, Switch S1 is L1 = (3)
OFF whereas switches S2 and S3 are both ON. Through the ∆IL1 Ibat fs
switches S2 and S3 , the inductors L2 and L3 stores energy Where, Vbat is the input voltage, D is the duty cycle, ∆IL1
from the high voltage side. The inductor L1 charges utilizing is the allowed ripple of inductor current, Ibat is the input
the stored energy in the coupling capacitor C1 and C2 . current and fs is the switching frequency.

Authorized licensed use limited to: NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY WARANGAL. Downloaded on May 28,2024 at 15:22:29 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
 Fig. 5. Simulation results of proposed BDC during different modes

TABLE I
T OPOLOGY C OMPARISON

[6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] Proposed Converter

S-4
S-5 S-5 S-6 S-4 S-7 S-3
CI-2
Components I-2 I-2 I-2 I-2 I-2 I-3
C-3
C-4 C-4 C-5 C-6 C-5 C-4
D-3
2 (3+D) 4 2(1+N ) (3+D) 2D
Discharge mode VCG V
(1−D) in
V
(1−D) in
V
(1−D) in
* V
(1−D) in
V
(1−D)2 in
V
(1−D) in
D D D D D2 (1−D)
Charge mode VCG V
2 in
V
(4−D) in
V
4 in
* V
2(N +1) in
V
(4−D) in 2D
Vin
LVS current ripple Moderate Large Low Low Low Low Low
Balanced Output
Switched capacitor technique - - - - - Inherent technique
Capacitor Voltage
∗
S- Switch, I- Inductor, CI - Coupled Inductor, C - Capacitor, Not mentioned

The expression to find the inductor (L2 and L3 ) values are

given as follows: Po D
Co1 = (7)
(Vo1 + Vo2 )∆VCo1 fs
(Vo1 + Vo2 )D
L2,3 = (4) Po D
2Ibat fs Co2 = (8)
(Vo1 + Vo2 )∆VCo2 fs
Where, Vo1 and Vo2 is the output voltages, D is the duty
cycle, Ibat is the input current, and fs is the switching Where, Po is the power rating, D is the duty cycle, ∆VCo1
frequency. and ∆VCo2 is the voltage ripple in the output voltage.
The interlinking capacitors (C1 and C2 ) values are ex- IV. S IMULATION R ESULT AND VALIDATION
pressed as follows:
The proposed BDC converter is simulated to verify its oper-
(Vo1 + Vo2 )D ations during discharge mode and charging mode. Fig. 5 shows
C1 = (5) the results of the proposed converter with case I as discharging
∆VC1 fs RL
mode and case II as charging mode. It consists of gate pulse
(Vo1 + Vo2 )D for power switches S1 , S2 and S3 , input voltage Vbat , output
C2 = (6) voltages Vo1 and Vo2 , input current Ibat or inductor L1 current,
∆VC2 fs RL
inductor L2 and L3 current, output current Io1 and Io2 . The
Where, D is the duty cycle, ∆VC1 and ∆VC2 are the simulation parameters are listed in the appendix section.
allowed voltage ripple in the capacitors C1 and C2 , RL is (i) Case I (Discharging mode): Fig. 5 (i) shows the results
2
the equivalent resistance (RL = (Vo1 +V
Po
o2 )
) of the proposed BDC for discharging mode. The input DC
The output capacitors (Co1 and Co2 ) values are expressed voltage is selected around 140 V and it generates two splited
as follows: output voltage Vo1 and Vo2 with an value of 400 V. The

Authorized licensed use limited to: NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY WARANGAL. Downloaded on May 28,2024 at 15:22:29 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
 balanced output voltage is utmost important and important [4] J. H. D. G. Pinto, W. C. S. Amorim, A. F. Cupertino, H. A. Pereira,
feature of the proposed converter. This balanced voltage is S. I. S. Junior and R. Teodorescu, “Optimum Design of MMC-Based
ES-STATCOM Systems: The Role of the Submodule Reference Voltage,”
very useful for the proper operation of multilevel inverters in IEEE Trans. on Ind. Appl., vol. 57, no. 3, pp. 3064-3076, May-June 2021.
STATCOM application with ESS. In the conventional BDC, [5] S. Feng, X. Wu, P. Jiang, L. Xie and J. Lei, “Mitigation of Power System
the balanced voltage is not guaranteed and it will badly Forced Oscillations: An E-STATCOM Approach,” IEEE Access, vol. 6,
pp. 31599-31608, 2018.
effect the operation of ESS-STATCOM. The inductor current [6] Y. Zhang, Y. Gao, J. Li, and M. Sumner, “Interleaved Switched-Capacitor
waveforms shows that proposed BDC operates in continuous Bidirectional DC-DC Converter with Wide Voltage-Gain Range for En-
conduction mode during this case. From output current Io1 ergy Storage Systems,” IEEE Trans. Pow. Electro.,, vol. 33, no. 5, pp.
3852 – 3869.
and Io2 and output voltages Vo1 and Vo2 , 4 A and 400 V [7] S. M. Fardahar, and M. Sabahi, “New Expandable Switched-Capacitor/
respectively, proposed converter operated with a power rating Switched-Inductor High-Voltage Conversion Ratio Bidirectional DC–DC
of 3.2 kW with a efficiency of 98.7% . Converter,” IEEE Trans. Pow. Electro., vol. 35, no. 3, pp. 2480 - 2487,
March 2020.
(ii) Case II (Charging mode): Fig. 5 (ii) shows the results of [8] M. Hadi, N. Elsayad, and O. A. Mohammed, “A Voltage-Quadrupler
the proposed BDC for charging mode. In this case operations Interleaved Bidirectional DC–DC Converter with Intrinsic Equal Current
of the BDC is reversed for charging the input energy storage Sharing Characteristic for Electric Vehicles,” IEEE Trans. Ind. Electron.,
vol. 68, no. 2, pp. 1803 – 1813, June 2020.
system. Hence, two splited input in this case is availble with [9] Y. Li, Y. Wang, H. Song and D. Xu, “Analysis and Design of a
balanced 400 V which generates the output voltage of 120 Nonisolated Bidirectional DC–DC Converter Based on CLC Network,”
V which is the voltage rating of the energy storage system. IEEE Jour. of Emer. and Sel. Topics in Ind. Elec., vol. 2, no. 4, pp. 481
– 490, July 2021.
The inductor current waveforms shows that proposed BDC [10] M. R. Mohammadi, A. Amoorezaei, S. A. Khajehoddin, “A High Step-
operates in discontinuous conduction mode during this case. Up/Step-Down LVS-Parallel HVS-Series ZVS Bidirectional Converter
The proposed converter performance is compared with the with Coupled Inductors,” IEEE Trans. Pow. Electro.,vol. 37, no. 2, pp.
1945 – 1961, Aug 2021.
various BDC available in the literature in terms of component [11] V. S. Rao, and Kumaravel S., “Ultra-Voltage Gain Bidirectional DC-DC
counts, voltage conversion gain, current ripple, balance output Converter with Reduced Switch Voltage Stress and Improved Efficiency,”
capability. Table I shows these comparison and the findings. IEEE Trans. Circuits and Systems II: Express Briefs, DOI: 10.1109/TC-
SII.2022.3189248.
From the findings it is clear that the proposed converter
performs well and have inherent output voltage balancing
feature with less number of component.
C ONCLUSIONS
In this paper a new BDC configuration is proposed for ESS-
STATCOM application. The balanced output voltage and low
voltage conversion gain problem of the conventional BDC is
solved by introducing the proposed converter. Moreover, it has
less component counts with low input current ripple in the
energy storage system which improves the input source life
expectancy. In terms of component counts, voltage conversion
gain, current ripple, and balancing output capabilities, the
proposed converter’s performance is compared with that of
various BDC that are published in the literature. Finally, the
various operating stages and the operation principle of the
proposed converter has been verified using the simulation
results.
A PPENDIX I
Simulation Parameters: Vbat = 120V, Vo1 = 400V, Vo2 =
400V, fs = 20 kHz, L1 = 5 mH, L2 = 2 mH, L3 = 2 mH, C1
= 470 µF, Co1 = 4700 µF, Co2 = 4700 µF
R EFERENCES
[1] M. V. Manoj Kumar, M. K. Mishra and C. Kumar, “A Grid-Connected
Dual Voltage Source Inverter With Power Quality Improvement Features,”
IEEE Trans. on Sus. Ene., vol. 6, no. 2, pp. 482-490, April 2015.
[2] P. A. Afsher, M. V. Manoj Kumar, C. M. Nirmal Mukundan and K. Shyju,
“A PV-DSTATCOM With Adaptive DC-Link Voltage for Grid Integration
and PQ Enhancement,” IEEE Trans. on Ind. Appl., vol. 58, no. 5, pp.
6471-6484, Sept.-Oct. 2022.
[3] N. R. Merritt, C. Chakraborty and P. Bajpai, “An E-STATCOM Based
Solution for Smoothing Photovoltaic and Wind Power Fluctuations In a
Microgrid Under Unbalanced Conditions,” IEEE Trans. on Pow. Sys., vol.
37, no. 2, pp. 1482-1494, March 2022.

Authorized licensed use limited to: NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY WARANGAL. Downloaded on May 28,2024 at 15:22:29 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.