• The Transactions of the Korean Institute of Power Electronics
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• v.20 no.5
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• pp.389-394
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• 2015

This paper proposes a series-connected power conversion system that integrates a photovoltaic power conditioner and a charge-balancing circuit. In conventional methods, a photovoltaic power conditioner and a cell-balancing circuit are needed for photovoltaic systems with energy storage devices, which results in a complex configuration and high cost. To overcome these problems, a series-connected DC-DC power conditioning system that integrates a photovoltaic power conditioner with a charge-balancing circuit is proposed. During the generation, the system operates as power conditioner only, whereas it operates as a cell balancing circuit during the rest time. For the analysis, the operating principle of the circuit and the controller design are done by PSIM simulation. For verification, a hardware prototype with 48-W photovoltaic modules has been implemented. Results verified that the modularized photovoltaic power conversion system with a series-connected storage successfully works with the proposed method.

• The Transactions of the Korean Institute of Power Electronics
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• v.24 no.4
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• pp.279-285
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• 2019

This study proposes an enhanced switching pattern that can improve energy transfer efficiency in an active cell-balancing circuit using a multiwinding transformer. This balancing circuit performs cell balancing by transferring energy stored in a specific cell with high energy to another cell containing low energy through a multiwinding transformer. The circuit operates in flyback and buck-boost modes in accordance with the energy transfer path. In the conventional flyback mode, the leakage inductance of the transformer and the stray inductance component of winding can transfer energy to an undesired path during the balancing operation. This case results in cell imbalance during the cell-balancing process, which reduces the energy transfer efficiency. An enhanced switching pattern that can effectively perform cell balancing by minimizing the amount of energy transferred to the nontarget cells due to the leakage inductance components in the flyback mode is proposed. Energy transfer efficiency and balancing speed can be significantly improved using the proposed switching pattern compared with that using the conventional switching pattern. The performance improvements are verified by experiments using a 1 W prototype cell-balancing circuit.

• The Transactions of the Korean Institute of Power Electronics
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• v.23 no.4
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• pp.247-255
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• 2018

This paper proposes a transformer design of a direct cell-to-cell active cell balancing circuit with a multi-winding transformer for battery management system (BMS) applications. The coupling coefficient of the multi-winding transformer and the output capacitance of MOSFETs significantly affect the balancing current transfer efficiency of the cell balancing operation. During the operation, the multi-winding transformer stores the energy charged in a specific source cell and subsequently transfers this energy to the target cell. However, the leakage inductance of the multi-winding transformer and the output capacitance of the MOSFET induce an abnormal energy transfer to the non-target cells, thereby degrading the transfer efficiency of the balancing current in each cell balancing operation. The impacts of the balancing current transfer efficiency deterioration are analyzed and a transformer design methodology that considers the coupling coefficient is proposed to enhance the transfer efficiency of the balancing current. The efficiency improvements resulting from the selection of an appropriate coupling coefficient are verified by conducting a simulation and experiment with a 1 W prototype cell balancing circuit.

• Journal of Power Electronics
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• v.17 no.3
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• pp.653-663
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• 2017

Multilevel active neutral-point-clamped (ANPC) converter combines the advantages of three-level ANPC converter and multilevel flying capacitor (FC) converter. However, multilevel ANPC converter often suffers from capacitor voltage balancing problems. In order to solve the capacitor voltage balancing problems for five-level ANPC converter, phase-shifted pulse width modulation (PS-PWM) is used, which generally provides natural voltage balancing ability. However, the natural voltage balancing ability depends on the load conditions and converter parameters. In order to eliminate voltage deviations under steady-state and dynamic conditions, the active voltage-balancing control (AVBC) methods of floating capacitors and dc-link capacitors based on PS-PWM are proposed. First, the neutral-point current is regulated to balance the neutral-point voltage by injecting zero-sequence voltage. After that, the duty cycles of the redundant switch combinations are adjusted to balance the floating-capacitor voltages by introducing moderating variables for each of the phases. Finally, the effectiveness of the proposed AVBC methods is verified by experimental results.

• Proceedings of the KIPE Conference
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• 2011.11a
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• pp.281-282
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• 2011

본 연구에서는 DC마이크로그리드의 전력품질을 향상시키기 위한 에너지 저장장치의 Power Balancing 제어기법에 대하여 기술하고 있다. 제안하는 시스템의 동작 타당성을 체계적으로 분석하기 위해 PSCAD/EMTDC 소프트웨어를 이용한 마이크로그리드 모델을 개발하였으며 여러 사례 적용에 대한 모의실험을 통해 제어기법의 타당성을 검증하였다.

• Journal of Power Electronics
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• v.10 no.5
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• pp.572-578
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• 2010

This paper discusses a transformerless shunt static compensator (STATCOM) based on a modular multilevel converter (MMC). It introduces a new time-discrete appropriate current control algorithm and a phase-shifted carrier modulation strategy for fast compensation of the reactive power and harmonics, and also for the balancing of the three-phase source side currents. Analytical formulas are derived to demonstrate the accurate mechanism of the stored energy balancing inside the MMC. Various simulated waveforms verify that the MMC based STATCOM is capable of reactive power compensation, harmonic cancellation, and simultaneous load balancing, while controlling and balancing all of the DC mean voltages even during the transient states.

• Journal of Power Electronics
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• v.12 no.4
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• pp.567-577
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• 2012

This paper introduces a new scheme to balance the DC bus voltages of a cascaded H-bridge converter which is used as a Distribution Static Synchronous Series Compensator (D-SSSC) in electrical distribution network. The aim of D-SSSC is to control the power flow between two feeders from different substations. As a result of different cell losses and capacitors tolerance the cells DC bus voltage can deviate from their reference values. In the proposed scheme, by individually modifying the reference PWM signal for each cell, an effective balancing procedure is derived. The new balancing procedure needs only the line current sign and is independent of the main control strategy, which controls the total DC bus voltages of cascaded H-bridge. The effect of modulation index variation on the capacitor voltage is analytically derived for the proposed strategy. The proposed method takes advantages of phase shift carrier based modulation and can be applied for a cascaded H-bridge with any number of cells. Also the system is immune to loss of one cell and the presented procedure can keep balancing between the remaining cells. Simulation studies and experimental results validate the effectiveness of the proposed method in the balancing of DC bus voltages.

• The Transactions of the Korean Institute of Power Electronics
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• v.20 no.2
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• pp.160-166
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• 2015

This study proposes an improved cell balancing circuit for fast equalization among lithium-ion (Li-ion) batteries. A simple voltage sensorless charge balancing circuit has been proposed in the past. This cell balancing circuit automatically transfers energy from high-to low-voltage battery cells. However, the circuit requires a switch with low on-resistance because the balancing speed is limited by the on-resistance of the switch. Balancing speed decreases as the voltage difference among the battery cells decrease. In this study, the balancing speed of the cell balancing circuit is enhanced by using the auxiliary circuit, which boosts the balancing current. The charging current is determined by the nominal battery cell voltage and thus, the balancing speed is almost constant despite the very small voltage differences among the batteries. Simulation results are provided to verify the validity of the proposed cell balancing circuit.

• The Transactions of The Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers
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• v.56 no.8
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• pp.1360-1366
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• 2007

In this paper, the load balancing which is one of the distribution power system's operation purposes was studied. Reconfiguration of Distribution power system presents that the configuration is changed by changing the switch on/off status which exists in the system according to the mentioned purpose. Through this method, the load of distribution power system is shown to be balanced. As a characteristic of complicated distribution power system, system is designed by being applied by OOP(Object Oriented Programming) method which connected more flexibly than existing Procedural Programming method, and the process of calculating the distflow and the loss of configurated system is shown. In addition, this paper suggests more efficient method compared by the results of reconfiguration on the purpose of the loss minimization and by the result of distribution power system reconfiguration on the purpose of load balancing. Moreover, it searches for the method to approach the global optimal solution more quickly.

• Journal of Power Electronics
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• v.19 no.4
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• pp.1011-1019
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• 2019

In this paper, a buck-flyback (fly-buck) stand-alone photovoltaic (PV) system for charge balancing with a differential power processor (DPP) circuit is proposed. Conventional feed-back DPP converters draw differential feed-back power from the output of a string converter. Therefore, the power is always through the switches and diodes of the string converter. Because of the returning conduction path, there are always power losses due to the resistance of the switch and the forward voltage of the diode. Meanwhile, the proposed feed-back DPP converter draws power from the magnetically-coupled inductor in a string converter. This shortens the power path of the DPP converter, which reduces the power losses. In addition, the extra winding in the magnetically-coupled inductor works as a charge balancer for battery-stacked stand-alone PV systems. The proposed system, which uses a single magnetically-coupled inductor, can control each of the PV modules independently to track the maximum power point. Thus, it can overcome the power loss due to the power path. It can also achieve charge balancing for each of the battery modules. The proposed topology is analyzed and verified using 120W hardware experiments.