A simple carrier-based neutral point potential regulator for three-level diode clamped inverter

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Int. J. Power Electronics, Vol. 3, No. 1, 2011 1 Copyright © 2011 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd. A simple carrier-based neutral point potential regulator for three-level diode clamped inverter P.K. Chaturvedi* and Shailendra Jain Department of Electrical Engineering, MANIT, Bhopal (MP) 462051, India E-mail: [email protected] E-mail: [email protected] *Corresponding author Pramod Agrawal Department of Electrical Engineering, IIT, Roorkee 247667, India E-mail: [email protected] Abstract: Three-level diode clamped inverter is a proven technology nowadays in medium and high power applications. Despite of its several advantages such as harmonic reduction and achieving high voltage and high power capabilities without series and parallel connections of switching devices, neutral point potential (NPP) variation is the inherent problem with this topology. This paper presents a simple NPP regulator based on addition of offset voltage to the reference sinusoidal voltages. This not only regulates the NPP, but also reduces the output voltage and current harmonics of the inverter. Simultaneously, second harmonic get reduced which may otherwise produce torque pulsations, harmonic currents and power losses. Simulation and experimental results have been presented to validate the concept. Keywords: DC link voltage; diode clamped inverter; neutral point potential regulator; sinusoidal pulse width modulation; SPWM; three-level inverter; offset voltage. Reference to this paper should be made as follows: Chaturvedi, P.K., Jain, S. and Agrawal, P. (2011) ‘A simple carrier-based neutral point potential regulator for three-level diode clamped inverter’, Int. J. Power Electronics, Vol. 3, No. 1, pp.1–25. Biographical notes: P.K. Chaturvedi received his BE and ME from SATI, Vidisha (MP), India, in 1996 and 2001 respectively. He has been with the Department of Electrical Engineering as a Lecturer at SATI, Vidisha (MP), India. Currently, he is working towards his PhD at MANIT, (Deemed University), Bhopal, India. His field of interest is the multilevel inverters. Shailendra Jain received his BE from SATI, Vidisha (MP), India, in 1990, his ME from SGSITS, Indore, India, in 1994 and his PhD from the Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee, India, in 2003. He was a Postdoctorate Fellow at the University of Western Ontario, Canada in 2007. Currently, he is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering at Maulana Azad NIT (Deemed University), Bhopal, India. His fields of interest include power electronics, electrical drives, active power filters, fuel cell technology and high power factor converters.

description

Three-level diode clamped inverter is a proven technology nowadaysin medium and high power applications. Despite of its several advantages suchas harmonic reduction and achieving high voltage and high power capabilitieswithout series and parallel connections of switching devices, neutral pointpotential (NPP) variation is the inherent problem with this topology. This paperpresents a simple NPP regulator based on addition of offset voltage to thereference sinusoidal voltages. This not only regulates the NPP, but also reducesthe output voltage and current harmonics of the inverter. Simultaneously,second harmonic get reduced which may otherwise produce torque pulsations,harmonic currents and power losses. Simulation and experimental results havebeen presented to validate the concept.

Transcript of A simple carrier-based neutral point potential regulator for three-level diode clamped inverter

  • Int. J. Power Electronics, Vol. 3, No. 1, 2011 1

    Copyright 2011 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.

    A simple carrier-based neutral point potential regulator for three-level diode clamped inverter

    P.K. Chaturvedi* and Shailendra Jain Department of Electrical Engineering, MANIT, Bhopal (MP) 462051, India E-mail: [email protected] E-mail: [email protected] *Corresponding author

    Pramod Agrawal Department of Electrical Engineering, IIT, Roorkee 247667, India E-mail: [email protected]

    Abstract: Three-level diode clamped inverter is a proven technology nowadays in medium and high power applications. Despite of its several advantages such as harmonic reduction and achieving high voltage and high power capabilities without series and parallel connections of switching devices, neutral point potential (NPP) variation is the inherent problem with this topology. This paper presents a simple NPP regulator based on addition of offset voltage to the reference sinusoidal voltages. This not only regulates the NPP, but also reduces the output voltage and current harmonics of the inverter. Simultaneously, second harmonic get reduced which may otherwise produce torque pulsations, harmonic currents and power losses. Simulation and experimental results have been presented to validate the concept.

    Keywords: DC link voltage; diode clamped inverter; neutral point potential regulator; sinusoidal pulse width modulation; SPWM; three-level inverter; offset voltage.

    Reference to this paper should be made as follows: Chaturvedi, P.K., Jain, S. and Agrawal, P. (2011) A simple carrier-based neutral point potential regulator for three-level diode clamped inverter, Int. J. Power Electronics, Vol. 3, No. 1, pp.125.

    Biographical notes: P.K. Chaturvedi received his BE and ME from SATI, Vidisha (MP), India, in 1996 and 2001 respectively. He has been with the Department of Electrical Engineering as a Lecturer at SATI, Vidisha (MP), India. Currently, he is working towards his PhD at MANIT, (Deemed University), Bhopal, India. His field of interest is the multilevel inverters.

    Shailendra Jain received his BE from SATI, Vidisha (MP), India, in 1990, his ME from SGSITS, Indore, India, in 1994 and his PhD from the Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee, India, in 2003. He was a Postdoctorate Fellow at the University of Western Ontario, Canada in 2007. Currently, he is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering at Maulana Azad NIT (Deemed University), Bhopal, India. His fields of interest include power electronics, electrical drives, active power filters, fuel cell technology and high power factor converters.

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    Pramod Agrawal received his BE, ME and PhD in Electrical Engineering from the University of Roorkee, Roorkee, India, in 1983, 1985 and 1995 respectively. Currently, he is a Professor in the Electrical Engineering Department of the Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee, India. He was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University du Quebec, Montreal, QC, Canada, from 1999 to 2000. He has published many papers in various national and international journals and conferences. His fields of specialisation are electrical machines, power electronics, microprocessor- and microcomputer-controlled AC/DC drives, active power filters and high power factor converters.

    1 Introduction

    Three-level diode clamped or neutral point clamped inverter has become a widely acceptable converter topology in various industrial applications such as static var compensation, rolling mills, marine and traction drives, AC power supplies, etc. As compared to two-level inverter, this topology reduces the current and voltage harmonics and also reduces the stress on devices for the same load power and voltage ratings. If employed in drives, it reduces the common mode voltages resulting in a stress reduction on motor bearings and winding insulation. One of the major inherent problems with the neutral point clamped inverter is the unbalanced voltages across DC link capacitors. Ideally, the voltages of two series connected DC link capacitors must be half of the DC link voltage, i.e., the neutral point voltage should be tightly regulated or to be set to zero. Unbalanced DC link voltage results in the oscillations in neutral point voltage and requires increased DC bus capacitance. It also distorts the inverter output voltage (Marchesoni et al., 2005; Bendre et al., 2006; Tallam et al., 2004; Song et al., 2003).

    The choice of the modulation scheme plays an important role in neutral point voltage control. Every scheme tries to turn on and off the appropriate device to charge and discharge the capacitors such that two DC capacitor voltages are balanced with a minimum ripple component. Several publications have discussed the solutions to this problem (Bendre et al., 2006; Tallam et al., 2004; Song et al., 2003; Boroyevich et al., 2002; Newton and Summer, 1997; Bendre and Venkataramanan, 2006). These solutions may be classified broadly into two categories. The first category is based upon space vector modulation (SVM) in which redundant switching states of the converter is used to balance the capacitor voltages. However, the relationship between neutral point voltage and inverter switching states is very complicated so it is not easy to balance the neutral point voltage exactly based on redundant switching states selection (Song et al., 2003). While in the second category, a zero sequence voltage is added to the modulating signal, using carrier-based PWM scheme. In some schemes, knowledge of load power factor angle or the direction of instantaneous power flow is required which is difficult to implement in transient conditions (Song et al., 2003). Other schemes require measurement of both DC voltages and load currents (Boroyevich et al., 2002; Newton and Summer, 1997; Bendre et al., 2006). The concept of using analytical solution of zero sequence voltages for neutral point voltage control is discussed in Song et al. (2003) and Boroyevich et al. (2002, 2003). Because there are a large number of expressions for zero sequence voltage for many sectors, the implementation may be cumbersome. There is a close relationship between zero sequence voltage and switching states of SVM; injection of zero sequence voltage schemes can be applied to both SVM and carrier-based

  • A simple carrier-based neutral point potential regulator 3

    modulation (Newton and Summer, 1997). Li et al. (2007) reported sinusoidal pulse width modulation (SPWM) technique with carrier disposed vertically to control neutral point potential (NPP).

    This paper presents the design and implementation of a simple NPP regulator based upon addition of offset voltage to the reference voltages. The offset voltage required for this method is calculated using the proposed method. This requires the difference between two DC link capacitor voltages for neutral point control implementation without measuring the power factor angle. The basic idea behind this concept is to control the charging and discharging of two capacitors by suitably modifying the modulating signal. Furthermore, a real-time capacitor voltage balancing algorithm is proposed which is easier to be implemented without the need of load power factor angle. The simulated and experimental results of the proposed scheme are presented to show its effectiveness. Experimental implementation has been performed using dSPACE DS 1104.

    2 Circuit configuration and control signal generation

    The basic circuit topology of the three-phase diode clamped three-level inverter (neutral point clamped) is shown in Figure 1. The circuit consists of two DC link capacitors, 12 power switches and six clamping diodes. The middle point of the DC bus capacitors is known as neutral point 0. The main feature of this topology is the clamping diodes which clamp the switch voltage to half of the DC bus voltage, reducing the voltage stress of the switching devices. The output voltage has three different states: (+, 0, ) and corresponding output phase voltages are (+Vdc/2, 0 and Vdc/2) where Vdc/2 is the voltage across each capacitor. Switching states to synthesise three-level output voltage for phase a are defined in Table 1. Because each phase can generate three values of voltage, total number of switching states obtained is 33 = 27. Figure 2 explains the principle of pulse generation for each switch. Modulating signals Va, Vb and Vc are compared with triangular carrier signals at every instant for obtaining the control pulses for each device as shown in Figure 2(a).

    Figure 1 Structure of three-phase, three-level diode clamped inverter

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    Figure 2 Generation of pulses for three-level diode clamped inverter, (a) carrier and modulating waveforms (b) control pulses for the upper two switches in each phase leg

    (a)

    (b)

    Table 1 Switching states for phase a of three-level diode clamped inverter

    Sa1 Sa2 Sa1 Sa2 Switching states Output phase voltage (Va0) 1 1 0 0 + +Vdc/2 0 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 Vdc/2

    For example, comparison of modulating wave, Va (or Vb or Vc), of phase a (or b or c), with carrier 1 produces the control signal Sa1 (or Sb1 or Sc1) and that with carrier 2 produces the control signal Sa2 (or Sb2 or Sc2). Control pulses for switches Sa1, Sa2, Sb1, Sb2, Sc1 and Sc2 are shown in Figure 2(b). Pulses for switches Sa1', Sa2', Sb1', Sb2', Sc1' and Sc2' are complementary to the pulses Sa1, Sa2, Sb1, Sb2, Sc1 and Sc2 respectively. Comparison of modulating wave with carrier wave is explained in Figure 3 for phase a.

  • A simple carrier-based neutral point potential regulator 5

    Figure 3 Generation of pulses for three-level diode clamped inverter and phase voltage (see online version for colours)

    3 Concept of NPP variation

    The output phase voltage of three-level diode clamped inverter contains three states as given in Table 1. Neutral point is connected to the capacitor midpoint for the switching state 0. During this period, current is drawn from neutral point. It will cause one capacitor to charge while other to discharge. Average neutral point current is to be maintained zero and NPP (difference between voltages across two capacitors) is constant under normal operating conditions over a modulating period. Under some transient conditions or load imbalance, the average neutral point current may have non-zero value causing NPP variation. The main reason for NPP variation is the unequal charge distribution among two DC link capacitors. This unequal charge distribution may be due to unequal extraction of current from two capacitors. The charging and discharging of two capacitors are shown in Figures 4 and 5 for switching states (+00) and (0--). These switching states for phase a are defined in Table 1. Arrows show the flow of current from capacitor midpoint.

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    Figure 4 Current flow path in the switching state of (+00)

    Figure 5 Current flow path in the switching state of (0--)

    From these figures, unequal charging and discharging of capacitor current is clearly shown for identical line-to-line voltages across load. Therefore, it may be concluded that switching of different devices results in different capacitor current profile affecting the NPP and also neutral point current as shown in Figure 12 in Section 4. Voltages appeared across each switching device differ in both the cases and some devices may be overstressed. Neutral current flows into and out of neutral point or midpoint of DC link in these two states as shown in Figures 4 and 5 respectively. As a result, output line voltages will contain lower order harmonic contents and significant second harmonics as given in Ogasawara et al. (1993).

  • A simple carrier-based neutral point potential regulator 7

    4 NPP control strategy

    A number of papers are available on NPP control techniques. Among these techniques, SPWM-based technique is simpler and easier to understand with the equivalent performance as in the case of SVM. Celanovic et al. (2000) and Liu et al. (1991) presented the method of NPP control with space vector PWM.Basically, the NPP is the difference between the upper and lower DC bus capacitor voltages or voltage at the midpoint of two capacitors. It should be ideally zero otherwise large voltage ripples will be present in DC input voltage to the diode clamped inverter resulting in an increased lower order harmonics in the output voltage. The basic concept of NPP control is the charge balance control in the neutral point. Some authors have proposed the method of adding DC offset voltage to the sinusoidal modulating signal which transfers the amount of power flow from one capacitor to other. Shifting of DC offset voltage, upper or lower side, will result in controlled charging and discharging of the upper and lower capacitors. To implement this technique, only the direction of power flow through neutral point is required. Depending upon this power flow direction, appropriate amount of DC offset is calculated and added to the sinusoidal modulating signal to compensate for any imbalance between two capacitor voltages. But if the sinusoidal signal is too large in magnitude, then this method has no significant effect on NPP control. In such cases, ripple current in DC link depends upon load impedance and load power factor. In the present work, the above concept is used with only difference that in place of adding a constant DC offset voltage, a variable offset voltage is to be added which will effectively compensate the charge balancing of two capacitors.

    Figure 6 shows the control block diagram of NPP regulator. It consists of two DC voltage sensors (Vdc1 and Vdc2) to calculate the NPP (Vnpp) which is the difference between Vdc1 and Vdc2.

    npp dc1 dc2V V V= (1)

    Figure 6 Control block diagram of NPP regulator

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    This difference is compared with desired value of neutral point voltage which is zero for complete control. Error in neutral point voltage is then processed through PI regulator. After processing through PI regulator, a common mode offset voltage (Voffset) is generated which is added to the actual three-phase reference sinusoidal voltages.

    ( ){ }*offset p idc1 dc2 nppV K K / sV V V= + (2) For successful implementation of NPP control, average NP current should be controlled to be zero. Parameters of PI controller are found by first keeping Ki equal to zero and adjusting the proportional gain Kp to obtain DC voltage ripples less than 3%, observing overshoot and settling times and average neutral point current equal to zero. Then, Ki is adjusted to optimise the values of these PI parameters. The PI parameters obtained through trial and error method are Kp = 0.1, Ki = 0.01. The controller bandwidth can be increased by increasing the proportional gain of PI controller, but at the cost of degrading the harmonic profile of the inverter output voltage.

    Figure 7 Actual modulating signal, offset voltage and modified modulating signal with regulator (see online version for colours)

    New reference modulating signals are: *

    abc abc offsetV V V= (3) where Vabc is the actual modulating signal. Actual reference voltages, offset voltages generated and new reference voltage waves are shown in Figure 7. These new three-phase reference voltages are compared with two triangular carrier waves at higher carrier frequency to generate control signals for inverter switches as shown in Figure 8. A comparison can be made between Figures 2 and 8 regarding the pulse generation without and with regulator. Addition of offset voltage results in increased switching frequency of inverter resulting in improved harmonic profile. The main principle behind this control concept is that if there is a variation in NPP detected by the controller, it will add offset

  • A simple carrier-based neutral point potential regulator 9

    voltage to the reference voltage wave. This offset voltage results in a current to flow through neutral point to redistribute the charge among two capacitors to balance the voltages across two capacitors.

    Figure 8 Generation of control pulses with regulator, (a) comparison of one-phase reference voltage with carrier wave (b) control pulses for the upper two switches for each phase leg (see online version for colours)

    (a)

    (b)

    5 Simulation results

    The proposed control strategy has been simulated in MATLAB and Simulink environment using SimPowerSystem toolbox. Simulation parameters are given in Table 2.

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    Table 2 Simulation parameters

    DC link voltage 600 volts

    Load line-line voltage 415 volts

    Output frequency 50 Hz

    Load power 5.6 kW

    Load power factor 0.89

    Load resistance 15

    Load inductance 24.2 mH

    DC link capacitor 2,200 F

    Switching frequency 2 kHz

    Figures 9 and 10 show the inverter line voltage and load current with and without regulator. As observed, fundamental value is increased in both voltage and current. Table 3 gives the simulation performance of the regulator which clearly indicates reduction in average NPP from 3.163 volts to almost zero volts for a DC link voltage of 600 volts. Figure 11 shows the currents through four switching devices of leg a without and with regulator. The effect of the regulator on charging currents is clearly seen in Figure 11(b). Capacitor charging and discharging current profiles are shown in Figure 12. The difference in positive and negative cycles of currents with the same peak amplitudes results in redistribution of charges among two capacitors for voltage balancing. Figure 13 shows Vdc1 and Vdc2, NPP, line voltage (Vab), line current (ia) and capacitor currents ic1 and ic2 without and with regulator. As seen from Figure 13(b), NPP is almost zero and contains very small variations. Also in line voltage waveforms, the steps become more symmetrical due to voltage balancing, although small amount of low order harmonics (fifth and seventh) are injected which may be suppressed by using suitable passive filters. Table 3 Simulation performance

    Parameters Without regulator With regulator

    Fundamental value of Van 300.3 volts 313.8 volts

    Fundamental value of Vab 520 volts 541.4 volts

    Fundamental value of ia 17.85 amps 18.78 amps

    RMS load line voltage (Vab) 389.9 volts 414.5 volts

    RMS load current (ia) 12.63 amps 13.54 amps

    Average NPP 3.163 volts 0.0001 volts

    RMS NPP 0.08 volts 0.02 volts

    RMS neutral point current 10.71 amps 8.556 amps

    THD in Van 39.31% 34.15%

    THD in inverter Vab 20.46% 11.36%

    THD in ia 1.27% 3.49%

  • A simple carrier-based neutral point potential regulator 11

    Figure 9 Line voltage (Vab) and its harmonic spectrum, (a) without regulator (b) with regulator

    (a) (b)

    Figure 10 Load current (ia) and its harmonic spectrum, (a) without regulator (b) with regulator

    (a) (b)

    The performance of the regulator has been checked by creating large imbalance (around 15%, Vdc1 = 30.8 volts and Vdc2 = 65.9 volts). The regulator also works well under this condition. Table 5 in the paper gives the various conditions of DC link voltages under unbalanced and balanced capacitor voltages. PI controller will not be saturated up to this limit experimentally. It only saturates if the two DC link capacitor voltages are made highly unbalanced (above 60%, i.e., Vdc1 20 volts and Vdc2 80 volts). Beyond this range, the NPP cannot be controlled and it will never be zero.

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    Figure 11 Currents through switching devices of phase leg a, (a) without regulator (b) with regulator (see online version for colours)

    (a) (b)

    Figure 12 Capacitor currents profile, (a) without regulator (b) with regulator (see online version for colours)

    (a) (b)

    Figure 13 DC link voltages (Vdc1 and Vdc2), NPP, load voltage, load current and capacitor currents, (a) without regulator (b) with regulator (see online version for colours)

    (a) (b)

  • A simple carrier-based neutral point potential regulator 13

    Figure 14 gives two DC link voltages and NPP without and with regulator, clearly indicating the effect of the regulator. Without regulator, the average NPP is positive non-zero value (3.163 volts) with a DC component of 2.9 volts, and upon the application of the regulator, the average NPP and DC component become zero with reduced NPP variations as shown in this figure. Transient response of controller is studied by increase/decrease in load at 0.2 and 0.4 sec. NPP is seen to be almost unchanged as seen in Figure 15.

    Figure 14 DC link voltages (Vdc1 and Vdc2) and NPP, (a) without regulator (b) with regulator

    (a) (b)

    Figure 15 DC voltages, NPP, Vab, ia and capacitor currents with regulator when load is doubled at 0.2 sec and restored at 0.4 sec (see online version for colours)

    During load changing, NPP regulator works well and NPP is maintained at the same level as before load changing. From Table 3, it is clear that the average NPP is zero. Current ia is slightly distorted when using the regulator due to the redistribution of charges between

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    the capacitors. However, its THD is still within IEEE 519 standard limits of 5% with increased fundamental value as can be observed from Figure 10 and Table 3. Due to the redistribution of charges and balancing of DC link, the ripple voltage in DC link voltage is reduced to 4.7% for a capacitor of 2,200 F and 2.8% for a capacitor of 4,000 F. All the above results have been obtained without any filter. Performance can be further improved by using suitable passive filter.

    6 Experimental results

    A prototype of three-phase, three-level, diode clamped inverter is developed for experimental verification. Figure 16 shows the experimental schematic of NPP regulator. The parameters selected for experimental study are shown in Table 4. Control technique is implemented using dSPACE DS 1104 DSP board which is based on digital signal processor board TMS320F240.

    Figure 16 Experimental set-up for NPP regulator (see online version for colours)

    Table 4 Experimental parameters

    DC link voltage 100 volts Load resistance 45 Load inductance 5.2 mH DC link capacitor 2,200 F Switching frequency 2 kHz

  • A simple carrier-based neutral point potential regulator 15

    As shown in Figure 16, two DC voltages are first sensed using ISO 122 and given to DS 1104 board where NPP (Vnp) is derived. After processing through summer 1 and PI regulator, offset voltage Voffset is obtained. The modified reference modulating signals, Vabc*, are obtained after processing through summer 2. These modified modulating signals are then compared with two triangular carrier waves to generate control signals to be given to three-level, three-phase, diode clamped inverter module. Figure 17 shows the actual modulating sinusoidal signals, offset voltage, modified modulating signals and carrier signals in real-time on dSPACE control desk platform.

    Figure 17 Control desk layouts, (a) actual modulating sinusoidal signals (b) offset voltage to be added (c) modified modulating signals (d) carrier signals (see online version for colours)

    Va Vb Vc

    Voffset

    Va* Vb* Vc*(a) (c)

    (b) (d)

    Initially, DC link voltage is kept 100 volts with equal distribution among two DC capacitors. An unbalance in two capacitor voltages (Vdc1 = 30.8 volts and Vdc2 = 65.9 volts) is created to show the effect of variation in DC link voltage without regulator as shown in Figure 18(a). Waveforms of line voltages, frequency spectrum of line voltage (Vab), DC link voltages, and NPP without and with regulator are shown in Figures 18(a) and 18(b) respectively.

    Significant second harmonics exist in inverter output voltage due to unbalanced DC link condition with reduced fundamental component and higher THD. Proposed NPP regulator effectively balances the voltages across two capacitors (49.3 volts and 49.1 volts) resulting in improved line voltage with increased fundamental voltage (from 41.6 volts to 59.2 volts) and reduced THD (from 38% to 22.8%) with almost zero NPP as shown in Figure 18(b). Figure 19 shows the phase voltages and phase currents for loaded inverter under unbalanced and balanced conditions. It is clear from this figure that due to unbalanced loading, positive and negative cycles are not equal and have a DC component, but after balancing, these become almost equal.

    Three-phase load voltages and currents are shown in Figure 20 for unbalanced and balanced DC link. Voltages and currents become very near to sinusoidal under balanced condition. Capacitor voltages (Vdc1, Vdc2) and NPP are shown in Figure 21. Under this

  • 16 P.K. Chaturvedi et al.

    condition, frequency spectrum of load voltage and load current under unbalanced and balanced conditions for one line (Vab and ia) are shown in Figures 22 and 23 respectively. THD in both voltages and currents are below 5% under balanced DC link voltages obtained employing NPP regulator. Second harmonics due to unbalance in DC link voltages does not exist under balanced DC link condition which otherwise results in torque pulsations, harmonic currents and power losses in AC drives applications.

    Figure 18 Line voltages, frequency spectrum of line voltage Vab and DC link voltages (control desk layouts), (a) without regulator at no-load (b) with regulator at no-load (see online version for colours)

    volts

    1

    0

    time (sec)

    (a)

  • A simple carrier-based neutral point potential regulator 17

    Figure 18 Line voltages, frequency spectrum of line voltage Vab and DC link voltages (control desk layouts), (a) without regulator at no-load (b) with regulator at no-load (continued) (see online version for colours)

    volts

    1

    0

    time (sec)

    (b)

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    Figure 19 Inverter phase voltages and currents, (a) unbalanced DC link condition (b) balanced DC link condition

    (a)

    (b)

    Notes: CH1, CH3, CH5: phase voltages Van, Vbn, Vcn (scale: 20 volts/div) CH4, CH6, CH2: phase currents ia, ib, ic (scale: 5 amps/div)

  • A simple carrier-based neutral point potential regulator 19

    Figure 20 Line-to-line voltages and currents, (a) unbalanced DC link condition for inductive load (b) balanced DC link condition for inductive load

    (a)

    (b)

    Notes: CH1, CH3, CH5: phase voltages Van, Vbn, Vcn (scale: 20 volts/div) CH4, CH6, CH2: phase currents ia, ib, ic (scale: 5 amps/div)

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    Figure 21 Layouts of control desk of dSPACE DS 1104, (a) unbalanced DC link conditions at no-load (b) balanced DC link conditions at no-load (see online version for colours)

    (a) (b)

    Figure 22 Harmonic spectrums of (a) load voltage, Vab, and (b) load current, ia, under loaded inverter and unbalanced DC link voltages

    (a) (b)

    Figure 23 Harmonic spectrums of (a) load voltage, Vab, and (b) load current, ia, under loaded inverter and balanced DC link

    (a) (b)

  • A simple carrier-based neutral point potential regulator 21

    Transient response of NPP regulator is observed by switching response of inverter under no-load and loading conditions as shown in Figures 24 and 25 respectively. Capacitor voltages become balanced on the application of NPP regulator within 200 ms. Upon the application of the load, capacitor voltages become unequal (Vdc1 = 42.2 volts and Vdc2 = 51.9 volts) due to unbalanced loading which becomes equal after the application of the regulator as shown in Figure 25. As observed in Figure 26, initially, DC link is balanced which becomes unbalanced due to intentional load unbalancing. Upon the application of NPP regulator, DC link is again balanced. These results are comparable with simulation results shown in Figure 14.

    Another way of presentation of DC link voltages and NPP is given in Figure 27, which is showing that two capacitor voltages were balanced initially and becomes unbalanced by adding a resistor in parallel with one capacitor. After the NPP regulator is activated, capacitor voltages are becoming balanced and their difference (NPP) is almost zero as shown in Figure 27(b). Table 5 gives the values of two capacitor voltages for different circuit conditions.

    Figure 24 Inverter on no-load, unbalanced to balanced condition

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    Figure 25 Inverter on-load, initially unbalanced and after some time balanced with the application of the regulator

    Figure 26 DC link voltages from balanced to unbalanced and unbalanced to balanced

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    Figure 27 Capacitor voltage waveforms, (a) balanced to unbalanced mode (b) unbalanced to balanced mode

    Vdc1

    Vdc2

    (a)

    Vdc1

    Vdc2

    (b)

    Note: CH1: Vdc1, 20 volts/div, CH3: Vdc2, 20 volts/div, 100 ms/div

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    Table 5 DC voltages for different circuit conditions

    Circuit conditions Vdc1 (volts) Vdc2 (volts) Vdc (volts) Inverter OFF 50 50 100 Without regulator 30.8 65.9 96.7

    No-load

    With regulator 49.3 49.1 98.4 Without regulator 42.2 51.9 94.1 On-load With regulator 46.6 46.6 93.2

    7 Conclusions

    A simple NPP regulator using multiple carriers is developed for a three-level diode clamped inverter, based on addition of variable offset voltage to the modulating signal. It does not need complex calculations involved in SVM technique. Simulation and experimental results have been presented to validate the effectiveness of the regulator. The regulator not only balances the DC link voltages, but also maintains the harmonic contents in load voltage and load current well within the limits imposed by IEEE 519 standard. Various operating conditions of load and DC link voltage are investigated. The average value of NPP is reduced to zero using the regulator.

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