Multilevel converters have been under research and development for more than three decades and have found successful industrial application. However, this is still a technology under development, and many new contributions and new commercial topologies have been reported in the last few years. The aim of this paper is to group and review these recent contributions, in order to establish the current state of the art and trends of the technology, to provide readers with a comprehensive and insightful review of where multilevel converter technology stands and is heading. This paper first presents a brief overview of well-established multilevel converters strongly oriented to their current state in industrial applications to then center the discussion on the new converters that have made their way into the industry. In addition, new promising topologies are discussed. Recent advances made in modulation and control of multilevel converters are also addressed. A great part of this paper is devoted to show nontraditional applications powered by multilevel converters and how multilevel converters are becoming an enabling technology in many industrial sectors. Finally, some future trends and challenges in the further development of this technology are discussed to motivate future contributions that address open problems and explore new possibilities.

/pdf/recent-advances-and-industrial-applications-of-multilevel-26fluutoc9.pdf

Recent Advances and Industrial Applications of Multilevel Converters

This paper presents a technology review of voltage-source-converter topologies for industrial medium-voltage drives. In this highly active area, different converter topologies and circuits have found their application in the market. This paper covers the high-power voltage-source inverter and the most used multilevel-inverter topologies, including the neutral-point-clamped, cascaded H-bridge, and flying-capacitor converters. This paper presents the operating principle of each topology and a review of the most relevant modulation methods, focused mainly on those used by industry. In addition, the latest advances and future trends of the technology are discussed. It is concluded that the topology and modulation-method selection are closely related to each particular application, leaving a space on the market for all the different solutions, depending on their unique features and limitations like power or voltage level, dynamic performance, reliability, costs, and other technical specifications.

Multilevel Voltage-Source-Converter Topologies for Industrial Medium-Voltage Drives

http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/iel5/5610941/5624686/05624745.pdf

Power electronics

Cascaded multilevel inverters synthesize a medium-voltage output based on a series connection of power cells which use standard low-voltage component configurations. This characteristic allows one to achieve high-quality output voltages and input currents and also outstanding availability due to their intrinsic component redundancy. Due to these features, the cascaded multilevel inverter has been recognized as an important alternative in the medium-voltage inverter market. This paper presents a survey of different topologies, control strategies and modulation techniques used by these inverters. Regenerative and advanced topologies are also discussed. Applications where the mentioned features play a key role are shown. Finally, future developments are addressed.

A Survey on Cascaded Multilevel Inverters

This work is devoted to review and analyze the most relevant characteristics of multilevel converters, to motivate possible solutions, and to show that we are in a decisive instant in which energy companies have to bet on these converters as a good solution compared with classic two-level converters. This article presents a brief overview of the actual applications of multilevel converters and provides an introduction of the modeling techniques and the most common modulation strategies. It also addresses the operational and technological issues.

/pdf/the-age-of-multilevel-converters-arrives-izieu77jn6.pdf

The age of multilevel converters arrives

Dynamic wireless charging for electric vehicles is an emerging technology to reduce on-board battery size and extend driving range. Due to its unique characteristic of vehicle-speed-related pulse-like load profile, the high-power dynamic wireless charging system (DWCS) introduces high stress to the utility grid. In this paper, an optimization model for renewable energy integration in the DWCS is proposed to mitigate the grid impact and minimize the operation costs of the whole system. As the load profile of DWCS is related to the traffic volume and various approaching vehicle speeds, the annual average daily traffic data and a stochastic model are used to develop 24-hour load profile of DWCS. To find a tradeoff between grid impact mitigation and operation costs minimization, relationships among power demand from power grid, photovoltaic (PV) capacity, wind energy (WE) capacity and energy storage (ES) capacity are analyzed, and the optimization objective and constraints are developed. Numerical simulation results demonstrate that energy storage integration can greatly mitigate the grid impact of DWCS, and optimal ratio of PV and WE can significantly reduce the operation cost of DWCS.

Optimized Renewable Energy Integration for EV High-Power Dynamic Wireless Charging Systems

Transmission line inspection becomes increasingly more important as power system infrastructure ages because proactively identifying line maintenance needs is crucial for minimizing outages. Utilizing robots to conduct such inspections is both safer for humans and less costly in terms of labor, but finding an appropriate on-line robot design presents its own set of challenges. This paper proposes a touch-free transmission line inspection system in which an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) conducts all inspection activities and, while doing so, charges from the line via inductive power transmission. Two coil designs are presented and tested for this charging application - one with an air core and one with a line-enclosing core clamp. Finally, the benefits and challenges associated with each design are discussed, along with the general practicality of inductive charging via transmission lines for UAV applications.

Inductive power harvesting for a touchless transmission line inspection system

In this paper, a novel three-phase converter is proposed for ac to dc wireless power transfer (WPT) systems for electric vehicle (EV) charging applications. The proposed innovative solution, called as Oak Ridge Converter, reduces the design complexity and cost by eliminating the front-end converter stage compared to the conventional systems. Additionally, grid side requirements can be met with the proposed creative concept. In this concept, the three-phase single-stage Oak Ridge Converter directly converts the 60 Hz grid frequency into high-frequency voltage and utilizes hybrid grid-source and high-frequency to realize power transfer from AC source through resonant network and coupling coils to the battery load. Simulation validation of the proposed three-phase system is currently being carried on and the results will be will be provided to validate the theoretical studies with the input of 277 V AC,RMS and output of 675 V DC at 35 kW power. The system current total harmonic distortion (THD) is measured 5% with a power factor (PF) of 0.98 and overall hardware development of the system that will be used for experiments is presented.

A Novel Three-Phase Oak Ridge AC / DC Converter for Wireless EV Charger Applications

Ac-ac matrix converters and cycloconverters require bi-directional switches, which are typically formed by two antiparallel thyristors or a two-switch (IGBT/MOSFETs) two-diode configuration As silicon carbide (SiC) and gallium nitride (GaN) devices become more available, it is possible to have higher voltage FETs with low conduction and switching losses and reverse conduction capability, which allows the elimination of the diodes in a bidirectional switch This paper will investigate a bidirectional switch formation that is formed by using two normally-on SiC JFETs in anti-series with no anti-parallel diodes

Anti-series normally-On SiC JFETs operating as bidirectional switches

Sensors are essential in feedback control systems, because the performance is dependent on the measurements. Fault in sensors may lead to intolerable degradation of performance and even to instability. Therefore, the high performance expected with vector control may not be achieved with fault in sensors. Several approaches related to fault tolerant motor control have already been proposed. However, most of them consider the sensors fault-free and work about faults in motors and actuators. Furthermore, the purpose of this work is not only sensor fault tolerance but also sensor fault compensation. In a standard fault tolerant approach, the fault would be detected and the sensor would be isolated. The faulted sensor may have an off-set or scaling error and could still be used if its error is compensated. In this paper, this is done with a mathematical solution based on kernel regression that can compensate the measurement error generating more accurate and reliable estimates. This technique is described and applied in motor drives. Simulated and experimental results are presented and discussed.

Burak Ozpineci

Papers

Optimized Renewable Energy Integration for EV High-Power Dynamic Wireless Charging Systems

Inductive power harvesting for a touchless transmission line inspection system

A Novel Three-Phase Oak Ridge AC / DC Converter for Wireless EV Charger Applications

Anti-series normally-On SiC JFETs operating as bidirectional switches

Sensor Compensation in Motor Drives using Kernel Regression