A Resilient Framework for Fault-Tolerant Operation of Modular Multilevel Converters

This paper presents a resilient framework for fault-tolerant operation in modular multilevel converters (MMCs) to facilitate normal operation under internal and external fault conditions. This framework is realized by designing and implementing a supervisory algorithm and a postfault restoration sch...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:IEEE transactions on industrial electronics (1982) 2016-05, Vol.63 (5), p.2669-2678
Main Authors: Ghazanfari, Amin, Mohamed, Yasser Abdel-Rady I.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Algorithms
Capacitors
Circuit faults
Converters
Fault diagnosis
Fault tolerance
Fault tolerant systems
Faults
Metal matrix composites
Modular
Modular multilevel converters
Multilevel
multilevel modular capacitor-clamped dc/dc converter
Restoration
Switches
Topology
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:This paper presents a resilient framework for fault-tolerant operation in modular multilevel converters (MMCs) to facilitate normal operation under internal and external fault conditions. This framework is realized by designing and implementing a supervisory algorithm and a postfault restoration scheme. The supervisory algorithm includes monitoring and decision-making units to detect and identify faults by analyzing the circulating current and submodule capacitor voltages in a very short time. The postfault restoration scheme is proposed to immediately replace the faulty submodule with the redundant healthy one. The restoration is achieved by virtue of a multilevel modular capacitor-clamped dc/dc converter (MMCCC), which is redundantly aggregated to each arm of the MMC. This design effectively guarantees smooth mode transition and handles the failure of multiple submodules in a short time interval. In addition, a modified modulation scheme is presented to ensure submodule capacitor voltage balancing of the MMC without implementing any additional hardware. Fast fault identification, a fully modular structure, and robust postfault restoration are the main features of the proposed framework. Digital time-domain simulation studies are conducted on a 21-level MMC to confirm the effectiveness and resilience of the proposed fault-tolerant framework during internal and external faults. Furthermore, the proposed framework is implemented in the FPGA-based RT-LAB real-time simulator platform to validate its resilience in a hardware-in-the-loop setup.
ISSN:0278-0046
1557-9948
DOI:10.1109/TIE.2016.2516968