The New High-Efficiency Hybrid Neutral-Point-Clamped Converter

This paper introduces a novel three-level voltage-source converter (VSC) as an alternative to known three-level topologies, including the conventional neutral-point-clamped converter (NPCC), many T-type VSCs, and active NPCC. It is shown that, operating in the low converter dc-link voltage range, th...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inIEEE transactions on industrial electronics (1982) Vol. 60; no. 5; pp. 1919 - 1935
Main Authors Soeiro, T. B., Kolar, J. W.
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published IEEE 01.05.2013
Subjects
Clamps
Modulation
Neutral-point-clamped converter (NPCC)
Power conversion
space vector modulation (SVM)
Switches
three-level voltage-source converters (VSCs)
Topology
Vectors
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Summary:This paper introduces a novel three-level voltage-source converter (VSC) as an alternative to known three-level topologies, including the conventional neutral-point-clamped converter (NPCC), many T-type VSCs, and active NPCC. It is shown that, operating in the low converter dc-link voltage range, this new solution not only can achieve higher efficiency than many typical three-level structures but also can overcome their drawback of asymmetrical semiconductor loss distribution for some operating conditions. Therefore, a remarkable increase of the converter output power capability and/or system reliability can be accomplished. The switching states and commutations of the converter, named here as hybrid NPCC (H-NPCC), are analyzed, and a loss-balancing scheme is introduced. Five- and seven-level H-NPCC topologies with loss-balancing features are also presented. Finally, a semiconductor-area-based comparison is used to further evaluate many three-level VSC systems. Interestingly, the total chip area of the proposed H-NPCC is already the lowest for low switching frequencies.
ISSN:0278-0046
1557-9948
DOI:10.1109/TIE.2012.2209611