• Journal of Electrical Engineering and Technology
• /
• v.13 no.3
• /
• pp.1241-1250
• /
• 2018

Parallel three-phase voltage source inverters in a direct connection configuration are widely used to increase system power ratings. A zero-sequence circulating current can be generated according to the switching method; however, the zero-sequence circulating current not only distorts current, but also reduces the system reliability and efficiency. In this paper, a model predictive control scheme is proposed for parallel inverters to drive an interior permanent magnet synchronous motor with zero-sequence circulating current suppression. The voltage vector of the parallel inverters is derived to predict and control the torque and stator flux components. In addition, the zero-sequence circulating current is suppressed by designing the cost function without an additional current sensor and high-impedance inductor. Simulation and experimental results are presented to verify the proposed control scheme.

• The Transactions of the Korean Institute of Power Electronics
• /
• v.20 no.1
• /
• pp.19-30
• /
• 2015

A static synchronous compensator (STATCOM) applied to rapidly changing, highly unbalanced loads such as electric arc furnaces (EAFs), requires both positive-sequence and negative-sequence current control, which indicates fast response characteristics and can be controlled independently. Furthermore, a delta-connected STATCOM with cascaded H-bridge configuration accompanying multiple separate DC-sides, should have high performance zero-sequence current control to suppress a phase-to-phase imbalance in DC-side voltages when compensating for unbalanced load. In this paper, actual EAF data is analyzed to reflect on the design of current controllers and a pioneering zero-sequence current controller with a superb transient performance is devised, which generates an imaginary -axis component from the presumed response of forwarded reference. Via simulation and experiments, the performance of the positive, negative, and zero-sequence current control of a cascaded H-bridge STATCOM for EAF is verified.

• The Transactions of the Korean Institute of Power Electronics
• /
• v.19 no.4
• /
• pp.332-341
• /
• 2014

A cascaded H-bridge multi-level STATCOM(STATic synchronous COMpensator), which is composed of many cell inverters with independent dc-sources, generates inevitably dc-side voltage unbalance among phases when it compensates unbalanced load. It comes from the difference of flowing active power in each phase when this compensator makes negative-sequence current to eliminate the unbalance of source-side current. However, this unbalance can be controlled by injecting zero-sequence current which is decoupled with grid currents, so the compensator can work well during this balancing process. Both a feedback control algorithm, which produces zero-sequence current proportional to dc-side voltage unbalance within each phase, and a feedforward control algorithm, which makes zero-sequence current directly from the compensator's negative-sequence current, were proposed. The dc-side voltage of each phase can be controlled stably by these proposed algorithms in both steady-state and transient, so the compensator can have fast response to satisfy control performance under rapid changing load. These balancing controllers were implemented and verified via simulation and experiment.

• Journal of Electrical Engineering and Technology
• /
• v.13 no.2
• /
• pp.550-558
• /
• 2018

This paper presents the current limit strategy of voltage controller of delta-connected H-bridge static synchronous compensator (STATCOM) under an unbalanced voltage fault event. When phase to ground fault happens, the feasibility to heighten the magnitude of sagging phase voltage is considered by using symmetric transformation method in delta-structure STATCOM. And the efficiency to cover the maximum physical current limit of switching device is considered by using vector analysis method that calculate the zero sequence current for balancing the cluster energy in delta connected H-bridge STATCOM. The result is simple and obvious. Only positive sequence current has to be used to support the unbalanced voltage sag. Although the relationship between combination of the negative sequence voltage with current and zero sequence current is nonlinear, the more negative sequence current is supplying, the larger zero sequence current is required. From the full-model STATCOM system simulation, zero sequence current demand is identified according to a ratio of positive and negative sequence compensating current. When only positive sequence current support voltage sag, the least zero sequence current is needed.

• Proceedings of the KIPE Conference
• /
• 2016.11a
• /
• pp.143-144
• /
• 2016

The circulating current control within the phase legs is one of the main control objectives in a modular multilevel converter (MMC) under different operating conditions. This paper proposes a control strategy of circulating currents in the MMC under unbalanced voltage by using a proportional-resonant (PR) controller. Under the unbalanced voltage, the circulating currents in the MMC consists of three components such as positive-sequence, negative-sequence, and zero-sequence circulating currents. With the PR controller, all components of the circulating current will be directly controlled in the stationary reference frame without decomposing into positive- and negative-sequence components. Thus, the ripples in the circulating currents and the DC current are suppressed under the unbalanced voltage. The effectiveness of the proposed method is verified by simulation results based on PSCAD/EMTDC simulation program.

• The Transactions of the Korean Institute of Power Electronics
• /
• v.27 no.2
• /
• pp.126-133
• /
• 2022

This study proposes a suppression of zero sequence current (ZSC), which is caused by zero sequence voltage (ZSV) for a dual two-level inverter with single DC bus. Large output voltages enable the dual inverter with single DC bus to improve a system efficiency compared with single inverter. However, the structure of dual inverter with single DC bus inevitably generates ZSC, which reduces the system efficiency and causes a current ripple. ZSV is also produced by dead time, and its magnitude is determined by the DC bus and current direction. This study presents a novel space vector modulation method that allows the instantaneous suppression of ZSC. Based on a condition where a switching period is twice a sampling (control) period, the proposed control method is implemented by injecting the offset voltage at the primary inverter. This offset voltage is injected in half of the switching period to suppress the ZSC. Simulation and experiments are used to compare the proposed and conventional methods to determine the ZSC suppression performance.

• Proceedings of the KIPE Conference
• /
• 2003.07a
• /
• pp.5-9
• /
• 2003

Conventional variable-speed Induction motor drives with inverters are subject to detrimental effect of zero-sequence voltages, such a shaft voltage and bearing current. This paper presents a way of the suppression of the zero-sequence components in multilevel H-bridge inverters. First examined Is the inherent zero-sequence characteristic of the conventional subharmonic PW method. Then it is shown that the zero-sequence voltage can be eliminated with proper -selection of switching states with space vector modulation. Although this method alone restricts the linear modulation range of control, a combination of the proposed method and the minimum switching method appears to be effective in suppressing the zero-sequence voltage to minimum level while maintaining the linear control range.

• The Transactions of the Korean Institute of Power Electronics
• /
• v.20 no.4
• /
• pp.321-329
• /
• 2015

The static synchronous compensator (STATCOM) of cascaded H-bridge configuration accompanying multiple separate DC sides is inherently subject to the problem of uneven DC voltages. These DC voltages in one leg can be controlled by adjusting the AC-side output voltage of each cell inverter, which is proportional to the active power. However, when the phase current is extremely small, large AC-side voltage is required to generate the active power to balance the cell voltages. In this study, an alternative zero-sequence current injection method is proposed, which facilitates effective cell balancing controllers at no load, and has no effect on the power grid because the injected zero sequence current only flows within the STATCOM delta circuit. The performance of the proposed method is verified through simulation and experiments.

• The Transactions of the Korean Institute of Power Electronics
• /
• v.20 no.3
• /
• pp.273-279
• /
• 2015

A zero vector selection method to reduce switching losses for model predictive control (MPC) of voltage source inverter is proposed. A conventional MPC of voltage source inverter has not been proposed, and a method to select the redundancy of the zero vector is required for this study. In this paper, the redundancy of the zero vectors is selected with generating a zero sequence voltage to reduce switching losses. The zero vector of 2-level inverter is determined by determining sign of the zero sequence voltage. In the proposed method, the quality of the current is retained and switching loss can be reduced compared with the conventional method. This result was verified by P-sim simulation and experiments.

• Journal of Power Electronics
• /
• v.18 no.2
• /
• pp.502-510
• /
• 2018

A circulating current is a major problem caused by directly connecting voltage-source inverters (VSIs) in parallel. This circulating current occurs as a zero-sequence current between the inverters by specific switch states. Several studies have presented alternatives using hardware and software methods. When coupled inductors (CIs) are employed for the high-frequency circulating current, a controller is required to prevent the low-frequency circulating current from saturating the CIs. In this study, the zero-sequence circulating current and its alternatives are investigated using hardware and mathematical description. A high-performance circulating current controller is proposed by applying a repetitive controller to the zero-sequence current control loop. The proposed controller can effectively minimize the low-frequency circulating current without any data sharing between the inverters in unfavorable conditions. It can also be applicable to the modular configuration of parallel three-phase VSIs. Experimental results verify the performance of the proposed controller.