Title: DC voltage balancing for neutral point clamped active PWM converter

Authors: Hassan Ali

Addresses: Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, College of Engineering and Architecture, University of Nizwa, P.O. Box 33, Nizwa, Sultanate of Oman

Abstract: This paper presents a unity power factor controller of three phase neutral point clamped (NPC) AC-DC PWM converter. A simplified current controlled scheme to control the DC link voltage, to ensure unity power factor operation and to control neutral point potential (NPP) of the converter is designed and developed for three-phase, three-level NPC AC-DC converter. The developed unity power factor controller (UPC) exhibits satisfactory performance under steady state and transient conditions. A supplementary circuit to control NPP has also been specified in this paper with its complete mathematical model. The developed control technique has been verified and confirmed through MATLAB simulation and experimental results.

Keywords: active PWM converters; multilevel converters; neutral point clamped converters; unity power factor controllers; UPC; DC voltage balancing; pulse width modulation; voltage control; mathematical modelling; simulation.

DOI: 10.1504/IJIED.2015.076275

International Journal of Industrial Electronics and Drives, 2015 Vol.2 No.4, pp.213 - 225

Received: 04 Jul 2015
Accepted: 09 Sep 2015
Published online: 30 Apr 2016 *

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