Control of Direct Voltage Regulated Active DC-Link Capacitance Reduction Circuits to Allow Plug-and-Play Operation

• Published in: IEEE transactions on industrial electronics (1982) Vol. 66; no. 8; pp. 6527 - 6537
• Main Authors: Mutovkin, Alexei, Yuhimenko, Vladimir, Mellincovsky, Martin, Schacham, Shmuel, Kuperman, Alon
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York IEEE 01.08.2019; The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
• Subjects: Active capacitor emulation; Active control; Capacitance; Capacitors; Circuits; Controllers; Converters; Current measurement; Data buses; dc-link capacitance reduction; Electric potential; Energy conversion; grid-interfacing converters; Power conversion; Power factor; Reduction; Steady-state; Voltage control; Voltage measurement
• ISSN: 0278-0046; 1557-9948
• DOI: 10.1109/TIE.2018.2870399

A novel method for controlling direct voltage regulated active dc-link capacitance reduction circuits (ACRC) is proposed in this paper. Instead of forcing the dc-link voltage of the power conversion system to follow a constant reference, the ACRC imposes dc-bus voltage in proportion to the integral of its input current. Consequently, it resembles an adjustable value capacitor from the dc-link side. Therefore, as opposed to existing control strategies, the proposed method simultaneously allows the dc-link voltage to reflect the power balance of the system and the pulsating power component to be diverted into significantly reduced auxiliary capacitance via a bidirectional dc-dc converter. As a result, replacing bulk dc-link capacitance by the proposed circuitry does not require any modification of existing grid-connected power conversion system controllers, thus allowing plug-and-play operation. The proposed approach is validated by application to a commercial power factor correction front end by both simulations and experiments.