The modular multilevel converter (MMC) has been a subject of increasing importance for medium/high-power energy conversion systems. Over the past few years, significant research has been done to address the technical challenges associated with the operation and control of the MMC. In this paper, a general overview of the basics of operation of the MMC along with its control challenges are discussed, and a review of state-of-the-art control strategies and trends is presented. Finally, the applications of the MMC and their challenges are highlighted.

Operation, Control, and Applications of the Modular Multilevel Converter: A Review

Multilevel inverters have created a new wave of interest in industry and research. While the classical topologies have proved to be a viable alternative in a wide range of high-power medium-voltage applications, there has been an active interest in the evolution of newer topologies. Reduction in overall part count as compared to the classical topologies has been an important objective in the recently introduced topologies. In this paper, some of the recently proposed multilevel inverter topologies with reduced power switch count are reviewed and analyzed. The paper will serve as an introduction and an update to these topologies, both in terms of the qualitative and quantitative parameters. Also, it takes into account the challenges which arise when an attempt is made to reduce the device count. Based on a detailed comparison of these topologies as presented in this paper, appropriate multilevel solution can be arrived at for a given application.

Multilevel Inverter Topologies With Reduced Device Count: A Review

This paper presents a comprehensive study on the state-of-the-art and emerging wind energy technologies from the electrical engineering perspective. In an attempt to decrease cost of energy, increase the wind energy conversion efficiency, reliability, power density, and comply with the stringent grid codes, the electric generators and power electronic converters have emerged in a rigorous manner. From the market based survey, the most successful generator-converter configurations are addressed along with few promising topologies available in the literature. The back-to-back connected converters, passive generator-side converters, converters for multiphase generators, and converters without intermediate dc-link are investigated for high-power wind energy conversion systems (WECS), and presented in low and medium voltage category. The onshore and offshore wind farm configurations are analyzed with respect to the series/parallel connection of wind turbine ac/dc output terminals, and high voltage ac/dc transmission. The fault-ride through compliance methods used in the induction and synchronous generator based WECS are also discussed. The past, present and future trends in megawatt WECS are reviewed in terms of mechanical and electrical technologies, integration to power systems, and control theory. The important survey results, and technical merits and demerits of various WECS electrical systems are summarized by tables. The list of current and future wind turbines are also provided along with technical details.

High-Power Wind Energy Conversion Systems: State-of-the-Art and Emerging Technologies

Transportation electrification is one of the main research areas for the past decade. Electric vehicles (EVs) are taking over the market share of conventional internal combustion engine vehicles. The increasing popularity of EVs results in higher number of charging stations, which have significant effects on the electricity grid. Different charging strat2egies, as well as grid integration methods, are being developed to minimize the adverse effects of EV charging and to strengthen the benefits of EV grid integration. In this paper, a comprehensive review of the current situation of the EV market, standards, charging infrastructure, and the impact of EV charging on the grid is presented. The paper introduces the current EV status, and provides a comprehensive review on important international EV charging and grid interconnection standards. Different infrastructure configurations in terms of control and communication architectures for EV charging are studied and evaluated. The electric power market is studied by considering the participation roles of EV aggregators and individual EV owners, and different optimization and game based algorithms for EV grid integration management are reviewed. The paper specially presents an evaluation on how the future EV development, such as connected vehicles, autonomous driving, and shared mobility, would affect EV grid integration as well as the development of the power grid moves toward future energy Internet and how EVs would affect and benefit the development of the future energy Internet. Finally, the challenges and suggestions for the future development of the EV charging and grid integration infrastructure are evaluated and summarized.

Electric vehicles standards, charging infrastructure, and impact on grid integration: A technological review

Modular multilevel converter (MMC) is one of the most promising topologies for medium to high-voltage high-power applications. The main features of MMC are modularity, voltage and power scalability, fault tolerant and transformer-less operation, and high-quality output waveforms. Over the past few years, several research studies are conducted to address the technical challenges associated with the operation and control of the MMC. This paper presents the development of MMC circuit topologies and their mathematical models over the years. Also, the evolution and technical challenges of the classical and model predictive control methods are discussed. Finally, the MMC applications and their future trends are presented.

Evolution of Topologies, Modeling, Control Schemes, and Applications of Modular Multilevel Converters

Control of integrated photovoltaic (PV) plants with energy storage systems (ESSs) has become an important research and development topic in recent times. In this context, a Multi-port Autonomous Reconfigurable Solar (MARS) plant that integrates PV and ESS to alternating current transmission grid and high-voltage direct current (HVdc) link is studied in this paper. With penetration of power electronic based resources in the grid, the grid’s capability to recover from frequency or voltage disturbances are reduced. Therefore, one of the vital objectives of any new grid integrated power electronic resource is to provide advanced control functions like voltage and frequency support to the grid during disturbances. In this research work, a detailed implementation of a synchronverter-based control algorithm of MARS is presented. The proposed control algorithm and the MARS control architecture are evaluated through simulations on PSCAD/EMTDC simulation platform to showcase the performance in different operating conditions. In addition, they are evaluated in Opal-RT offline simulation models which can also be used to perform control-hardware-in-the-loop (cHIL) tests.

Synchronverter-based Control of Multi-Port Autonomous Reconfigurable Solar Plants (MARS)

Multiport autonomous reconfigurable solar power plant (MARS) has been proposed for integrated development of photovoltaic (PV) and energy storage system (ESS) that can connect to high-voltage direct current (HVdc) and alternating current (ac) transmission grid. To de-risk the development of this complex integrated system that consists of hundreds to thousands of power electronics modules, a controller hardware-in-the-loop (cHIL) test setup will be extremely beneficial. The cHIL testing can be used for evaluation of modules as well as the hierarchical control system in MARS. With the unique configuration of power electronics modules in MARS, it becomes necessary to develop custom-designed real-time simulation models in the cHIL setup in absence of off-the-shelf models. In this paper, high-fidelity dynamic model of MARS, control algorithms at the lower level, and required communication algorithms are developed and optimized for real-time performance in the cHIL setup. Real-time experimental results from the cHIL are provided.

Real-time Simulation Framework for Hardware-in-the-Loop Testing of Multi-port Autonomous Reconfigurable Solar Power Plant (MARS)

Debnath, Suman Ph.D., Purdue University, May 2015. Control of Modular Multilevel Converters for Grid Integration of Full-scale Wind Energy Conversion Systems. Major Professors: Maryam Saeedifard and Steve D. Pekarek. The growing demand for wind power generation has pushed the capacity of wind turbines towards MW power levels. Higher capacity of the wind turbines necessitates operation of the generators and power electronic conversion systems at higher voltage/power levels. The power electronic conversion system of a wind energy conversion system (WECS) needs to meet the stringent requirements in terms of reliability, efficiency, scalability and ease of maintenance, power quality, and dv/dt stress on the generator/transformer. Although the multilevel converters including the neutral point clamped (NPC) converter and the active NPC converter meet most of the requirements, they fall short in reliability and scalability. Motivated by modularity/scalability feature of the modular multilevel converter (MMC), this research is to enable the MMC to meet all of the stringent requirements of the WECS by addressing their unique control challenges. This research presents systematic modeling and control of the MMC to enable it to be a potential converter topology for grid integration of full-scale WECSs. Based on the developed models, appropriate control systems for control of circulating current and capacitor voltages under fixedand variable-frequency operations are proposed. Using the developed MMC models, a gradient-based cosimulation algorithm to optimize the gains of the developed control systems, is proposed. Performance/effectiveness of the developed models and the proposed control systems for the back-to-back MMC-based WECS are evaluated/verified based on simulations studies in the PSCAD/EMTDC software environment and experimental case studies on a laboratory-scale hardware prototype.

Control of modular multilevel converters for grid integration of full-scale wind energy conversion systems

In power electronics, prediction of states may be used for identification of faults, determination of aging of components, identification of bad data measurements, among others. Prediction of states in power electronics have broadly been based on: (a) physics-based models, (b) data-driven models, and (c) hybrid models. In this paper, data-driven approaches are presented for intelligent prediction of states in multi-port autonomous reconfigurable solar power plant (MARS) and compared. The data-set needed to train the data-driven models based on artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms has been identified and the trained models are evaluated under different extrapolated normal and abnormal operating conditions. The AI algorithms include nonlinear auto-regressive exogenous model (NARX), spiking neural networks (SNN), and decision tree. The models are compared and contrasted. The best model (NARX) is evaluated under different normal and abnormal operating conditions that have indicated accurate prediction.

Intelligent Prediction of States in Multi-port Autonomous Reconfigurable Solar power plant (MARS)

Primary frequency support functionality can be an added advantage for any new grid integrated power electronics resource. With increased penetration of power electronics resources, inertial and primary frequency response capabilities are decreasing. In this research paper, an advanced model-based predictive control (MBPC) algorithm for providing frequency support to a new topology of integrated photovoltaic(PV), batterybased energy storage systems (ESS), and high-voltage direct current (HV dc) systems called multi-port autonomus reconfigurable solar (MARS) plants is based on the synchronverter-based control. The simulation of MARS-HV dc system with proposed control strategy is simulated and validated for MARS connected to low short circuit ratio (SCR) grids in PSCAD/EMTDC simulation environment. The control algorithm proposed showcases better performance in terms of frequency nadir improvement and frequency steady state improvemnt with respect to no frequency control.

Suman Debnath

Papers

Synchronverter-based Control of Multi-Port Autonomous Reconfigurable Solar Plants (MARS)

Real-time Simulation Framework for Hardware-in-the-Loop Testing of Multi-port Autonomous Reconfigurable Solar Power Plant (MARS)

Control of modular multilevel converters for grid integration of full-scale wind energy conversion systems

Intelligent Prediction of States in Multi-port Autonomous Reconfigurable Solar power plant (MARS)

Model Based Predictive Control for Frequency Support in Multi-port Autonomous Reconfigurable Solar Plants