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A Simplified Common-Mode Voltage Suppression and Neutral-Point Potential Control for the NPC Three-Level Inverter

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Abstract

Neutral-point potential unbalancing is an inherent disadvantage of NPC three-level inverter. Traditional control methods, e.g. the space vector PWM (SVPWM) considering balance factor or the model predictive control (MPC), usually needs large amounts of calculation and the common-mode voltage usually keeps large due to the zero vectors being involved in the modulation or the roll optimization. Aiming at above problems, this paper proposes a simplified model predictive algorithm based on the characteristics analysis on the unbalancing and common-mode voltage. Firstly, an approximate two-level structure containing 12 vectors is proposed by the reduced-order processing for the three-level structure, which solves the calculation complexity problem. Meanwhile, multi-constraints including switching frequency, neutral-point potential deviation and the common-mode voltage, are constructed within the roll optimization items of the MPC scheme to make common-mode voltage being restricted less than 1/6 DC voltage while the switching frequency is almost constant. Finally, experiments were carried out to verify that this method can realize a neutral-point voltage balance and a low common-mode voltage along with less execution time.

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Funding

Funding was provided by Shanghai Sailing Program (CN) (Grant no. 18YF1418300) and Key Laboratory of Control Power Transmission and Conversion (SJTU CN) (Grant no. 2016AC04).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Electrical Department, University of Shanghai for Science and Technology, Shanghai, China

    Qingqing Yuan, Jinyue Qian & An Li

  2. Key Laboratory of Control of Power Transmission and Conversion (SJTU), Ministry of Education, Shanghai, China

    Qingqing Yuan

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  1. Qingqing Yuan
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  2. Jinyue Qian
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  3. An Li
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Correspondence to Qingqing Yuan.

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Yuan, Q., Qian, J. & Li, A. A Simplified Common-Mode Voltage Suppression and Neutral-Point Potential Control for the NPC Three-Level Inverter. J. Electr. Eng. Technol. 14, 2389–2398 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s42835-019-00293-9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s42835-019-00293-9

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