As a new application area of electric vehicles, vehicle to home (V2H) recently becomes one of the most attractive research areas. In this paper, a three-phase four-wire inverter using four half-bridge legs is adopted to realize the V2H functionality. Such three-phase inverter acts as the grid-side ac/dc part of the battery charger. In order to deal with the imbalanced load, an independently controlled neutral module has been adopted to form the neutral line and provide the path for the zero-sequence current, together with split dc-bus capacitors. Each phase employs the independent sinusoidal pulse width modulation control with the virtual resistor paralleled with the load, namely, notch-filter-incorporated capacitor voltage feedback control, which damps harmonics around the resonant frequency at various load conditions. In addition, this paper quantifies the load imbalance versus the dc-link voltage oscillation and provides the guidance for the selection of the dc-link capacitance. Finally, a 10-kW three-phase four-wire inverter working at the V2H mode is built and tested, with the three-phase imbalanced load imposed to validate the proposed design and control strategy.

Imbalanced Load Regulation Based on Virtual Resistance of A Three-Phase Four-Wire Inverter for EV Vehicle-to-Home Applications

A complete analysis of the ac output current ripple in four-leg voltage source inverters considering multiple modulation schemes is provided. In detail, current ripple envelopes and peak-to-peak profiles have been determined in the whole fundamental period and a comprehensive method providing the current ripple rms has been achieved, all of them as a function of the modulation index. These characteristics have been determined for both phase and neutral currents, considering the most popular common-mode injection schemes. Particular attention has been paid to the performance of discontinuous pulse width modulation (DPWM) methods, including DPWMMAX and DPWMMIN, and their four most popular combinations DPWM0, DPWM1, DPWM2, and DPWM3. Furthermore, a comparison with a few continuous techniques (sinusoidal, centered pulse width modulations, and third harmonic injection) has been provided as well. Moreover, the average switching frequency and switching losses are analyzed, determining which PWM technique ensures minimum output current ripple within the linear modulation range at different assumptions. Numerical simulations and laboratory tests have been conducted to extensively verify all the analytical claims for all the considered PWM injections.

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A Comprehensive AC Current Ripple Analysis and Performance Enhancement via Discontinuous PWM in Three-Phase Four-Leg Grid-Connected Inverters

For AC microgrids with three-phase unbalanced loading conditions, the four-wire voltage source inverters (FW-VSIs) have become an advisable interfaced converter between the source and loads. Predictive control has been applied to FW-VSIs in recent years, but model errors are not solved well, which is caused through parameter mismatch, sampling error and time delay. Thus, the accurate following between reference value and predicted value is difficult to achieve. To this end, a dual-predictive control based on adaptive error correction (DPCEC) for the FW-VSIs is presented. Firstly, the state-space function of FW-VSIs under <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\alpha$</tex-math></inline-formula> <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\beta$</tex-math></inline-formula> 0 reference frame is built. Then, the DPCEC strategy is proposed based on the above issue. Therein, an adaptive error correction strategy is severally embedded into both the outer and inner prediction loop. Noting that the impacts of different negative factors can be simultaneously processed and corrected through adaptive error correction strategy. Not only does the proposed control strategy achieve better performance in steady state, but also retains fast dynamic response in transient state. Finally, simulation and experimental results which verify the high performance of the proposed control techniques are provided. 

Dual-Predictive Control With Adaptive Error Correction Strategy for AC Microgrids

The three-phase four-leg inverter (TPFLI) provides unbalanced voltage to a load or injects unbalanced current to a grid to compensate unbalanced current. However, it has a high switching loss because of the fourth leg. This paper presents a discontinuous pulse-width modulation (DPWM) method that minimizes the per-phase switching loss of the TPFLI. The discontinuous three-dimensional space-vector pulse-width modulation (3D SVPWM) can be implemented in the TPFLI by injecting the same offset voltage as the conventional DPWM of three-phase three-leg inverter (TPTLI). However, the conventional DPWM is unsuitable for TPFLI because of its unbalanced current. We demonstrate that the discontinuous phase can be chosen according to the offset direction when a voltage reference vector is specified. Based on this result, a new per-phase minimum-loss discontinuous PWM strategy is developed and compared with the conventional DPWM. This method can also be applied to the TPTLI and implemented by injecting an offset voltage generated using the inverter phase voltage reference and phase current. Furthermore, the lifespan of a TPFLI can be extended by preventing deterioration of a specific leg. The validity of the proposed method is verified through simulation and experiments.

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Minimum Loss Discontinuous Pulse-Width Modulation Per Phase Method for Three-Phase Four-Leg Inverter

The 4-leg inverter can adjust the load current or output voltage even under unbalanced load conditions, but it is known that the additional switch arm to the 3-leg inverter can increase the overall cost and the failure rate. This paper aims to analyze the failure rate and mean time between failures (MTBF) of 3-leg inverters and 4-leg inverters using part count failure analysis (PCA) and fault-tree analysis (FTA), and to compare the price of the inverters. The FTA can analyze the failure rate, including the type, number and connection status of the circuit components, and moreover the redundancy effect of the 4-leg inverter. For more accurate failure-rate prediction, the failure rate and MTBF of the 4-leg inverter according to the lifecycle of the controller are analyzed. Finally, by comparing the price of 3-leg inverters and 4-leg inverters using the cost model of major parts, the degree of reliability improvement against price increase is quantitatively analyzed.

Reliability and Economic Efficiency Analysis of 4-Leg Inverter Compared with 3-Leg Inverters

The three-phase four-wire inverter with split dc-link capacitors can supply unbalanced loads. For the purpose of reducing the filter inductors, a neutral inductor could be introduced into the neutral line. This paper analyzes the operation principle of the three-phase four-wire inverter with split dc-link capacitors when a neutral inductor is introduced. It is illustrated that the neutral inductor can reduce the zero-sequence switching harmonics in the voltages between the phase-leg midpoints and the output neutral point, thus the filter inductors can be reduced. The optimized design of the neutral inductor and filter inductors is proposed with the considerations of the inductor current ripple, the ability of supplying unbalanced loads, and the total energy stored in the inductors. The equivalent circuits of the three-phase four-wire inverter with split dc-link capacitors and neutral inductor is derived in the α–β–0 frame, and the zero-axis voltage regulator is modified to suppress the third-order harmonic in the zero-sequence current caused by the deadtime of the drive signals for the power switches. Finally, the experimental results from a 9-kW prototype are provided to prove the effectiveness of the proposed optimized design of the neutral inductor and filter inductors and the control strategy of the inverter.

Optimized Design of the Neutral Inductor and Filter Inductors in Three-Phase Four-Wire Inverter With Split DC-Link Capacitors


 Condition monitoring of railway point machines is important for train operation safety and effectiveness. Referring to the fields of mechanical equipment fault detection, this paper proposes a fault detection and identification strategy of railway point machines via vibration signals. Comprehensive feature distilling approach by combining variational mode decomposition (VMD) energy entropy, time- and frequency-domain statistical features is presented, which is more effective than single kind of features. The optimal set of features was selected with ReliefF, which help improve the diagnosis accuracy. Support vector machine (SVM) which is suitable for small sample is adopted to realize diagnosis. The diagnosis accuracy of the proposed method reaches 100%, and its effectiveness is verified by experiment comparisons. In this paper, vibration signals are creatively adopted for fault diagnosis of railway point machines. The presented method can help guide field maintenance stuff and also provide reference for fault diagnosis of other equipment.

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Haitao Liu

Papers

Optimized Design of the Neutral Inductor and Filter Inductors in Three-Phase Four-Wire Inverter With Split DC-Link Capacitors

Condition monitoring and fault diagnosis strategy of railway point machines using vibration signals