Tolerance Band Modulation Methods for Modular Multilevel Converters

Modular multilevel converters (M2Cs) are increasingly used in high-voltage direct current (HVDC) systems. The efficiency of M2Cs is influenced by the modulation and cell selecting methods, which determines the switching frequency and capacitor voltage ripple in the converter station. A new approach to modulation of the M2C is presented in this paper. Tolerance band methods are employed to obtain the switching instants, and also cell selection. The proposed methods overcome the modulation problem for converters with few cells on one hand and also reduce the sorting efforts for cell balancing purposes of many cells converter on the other hand. Three different algorithms are also proposed to balance the cell capacitor voltages. The evaluation is done in time-domain simulation by which the performance of each method is studied in both the steady-state and transient cases. It is observed that using tolerance band methods not only reduces the switching frequency but also allows for handling severe fault cases in a grid-connected system. Eventually, the most promising tolerance band method has been implemented and verified in a real-time digital simulator, RTDS®. The average switching frequency of 70 Hz has been achieved for the system under study, while the capacitor voltage ripple is limited to 10% of the nominal cell voltage.