Title: A power-flow control method for hybrid active front-end converters

Authors: Yen-Ching Wang; Zong-Jie Chen; Shang-Hung Hu; Tzung-Lin Lee

Addresses: Department of Electrical Engineering, National Sun Yat-sen University, No. 70, Lienhai Rd., Kaohsiung 80424, Taiwan. ' Getac Technology Corp., 5F Building A, No. 209, Sec. 1, Nangang Rd., Nangang Dist., Taipei City 11568, Taiwan. ' Department of Electrical Engineering, National Sun Yat-sen University, No. 70, Lienhai Rd., Kaohsiung 80424, Taiwan. ' Department of Electrical Engineering, National Sun Yat-sen University, No. 70, Lienhai Rd., Kaohsiung 80424, Taiwan

Abstract: The hybrid active front-end converter, which is composed of a capacitor and a voltage source converter in series connection, has been presented recently. Compared with grid-connected converter, the hybrid converter could be operated with reduced dc voltage as well as small-sized passive filters due to series-connected capacitor. This paper presents a power flow control method for a hybrid active front-end converter. Real power of the converter is controlled by the output voltage vector perpendicular to the grid voltage, whereas reactive power of the converter is determined by the output voltage vector parallel to the grid voltage. By dynamically adjusting voltage vector, power conversion between low-voltage dc side, such as PVs or batteries, and high-voltage grid side could be accomplished with no low-frequency transformer required. In addition, a harmonic resistance is emulated in the proposed method to avoid inrush current flowing into the converter due to unintentional voltage spike coming from the power system. Operation principles are explained in detail, followed by both computer simulations and experimental results validating effectiveness.

Keywords: hybrid front-end converters; active front-end converters; power flow control; capacitors; voltage source converters; harmonic resistance.

DOI: 10.1504/IJPELEC.2012.044145

International Journal of Power Electronics, 2012 Vol.4 No.1, pp.1 - 16

Received: 12 Mar 2010
Accepted: 14 Jan 2011
Published online: 23 Aug 2014 *

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