Abstract
The high number of levels of modular multilevel cascaded (MMC) converters enables the direct connection of the renewable generation units to the medium-voltage grid and improvement of the output power quality. The component number and control complexity increase linearly with the increase in the number of levels. On the other hand, the distortion in generated output voltage and semiconductor cost of the converter decrease dramatically with the increase in the converter number of levels. As the number of levels increase, it is possible to use lower switching frequencies, even the fundamental switching frequency, which can significantly reduce the switching losses. Therefore, the optimal selection of the number of converter levels is important for the best performance/cost ratio of the medium-voltage converter systems and this is the central content of this chapter. In this chapter, an 11-kV system and a 33-kV system are designed and analyzed taking into account the specified system performance, control complexity, and cost and market availability of the power semiconductors. It is found that the 19-level and 43-level converters are the optimal choice for the 11- and 33-kV systems, respectively. Besides the design and analysis of medium-voltage converters, the traditional low-voltage converters with power frequency step-up transformers are also discussed.
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Islam, M.R., Guo, Y., Zhu, J. (2014). Design and Analysis of 11- and 33-kV Modular Multilevel Cascaded Converters. In: Power Converters for Medium Voltage Networks. Green Energy and Technology. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-44529-7_7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-44529-7_7
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