A Comprehensive Study of a Hybrid Modulation Technique for the Neutral-Point-Clamped Converter

This paper presents a hybrid modulation technique for the three-level neutral-point-clamped converter. A modulation strategy, based on two modulation signals per phase, was presented previously. This strategy completely removes the low-frequency voltage oscillations that appear at the neutral point...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:IEEE transactions on industrial electronics (1982) 2009-02, Vol.56 (2), p.294-304
Main Authors: Zaragoza, Jordi, Pou, Josep, Ceballos, Salvador, Robles, Eider, Ibanez, Pedro, Villate, Jose Luis
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Amplitude modulation
Capacitors
Carrier-based modulation
Converters
Costs
Electric potential
Modulation
neutral-point-clamped (NPC) converter
optimal compensator
Oscillations
Phase modulation
Proposals
Pulse modulation
Space vector pulse width modulation
Strategy
Studies
Switching
Switching converters
Switching loss
three-level converter
Voltage
voltage balance
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Summary:This paper presents a hybrid modulation technique for the three-level neutral-point-clamped converter. A modulation strategy, based on two modulation signals per phase, was presented previously. This strategy completely removes the low-frequency voltage oscillations that appear at the neutral point (NP) in some operation conditions. However, it also has a major drawback: it significantly increases the switching losses of the converter. The proposal in this paper combines such a modulation strategy with sinusoidal pulsewidth modulation (SPWM). The main characteristic of this hybrid modulation is the reduction in switching losses at the cost of some low-frequency voltage oscillations at the NP. The amplitude of these oscillations can be controlled by varying the combination of the two strategies. The performance of the hybrid modulation is analyzed and compared with the original strategies. Power losses and oscillation amplitudes on the dc-link capacitors are evaluated. Experimental results show how the hybrid modulation performs by balancing the dc-link capacitors.
ISSN:0278-0046
1557-9948
DOI:10.1109/TIE.2008.2005132