2018 IEEE 7th International Conference on Power and Energy (PECon)

A Flying-capacitor Modular Multilevel Converter

Junliang Pan, Mingyu Wang

School of Electrical Engineering

Chongqing University
Chongqing, China

Abstract—With the increase of HVDC transmission, and accomplishes the complete electrical isolation of two
HVDC grids are the inevitable trend of the future. HVDC DC sides. One DC-DC converter module is used in [5],
DC-DC converters act as the indispensable components to which includes two H-bridge converters that are connected
transmit energy and connect HVDC grids with different by one single-phase transformer. Among the modules, one
voltage levels. This paper proposes a flying-capacitor side of module DC outputs in parallel connection form the
modular multilevel DC-DC converter for HVDC grid low voltage output of the converter, another side are
connection and offshore wind farm collection system. It connecting in series to form the high voltage output.
consists of a number of modular multilevel converters HVDC-DC auto transformer is an efficient converter
(MMC) and a series of flying capacitors. Due to the mature
presented in [6], which consists of two MMCs and one
technology of MMC, it is easy to control the power,
circulating currents, submodule voltage balancing of the
transformer. However, the high power high voltage
internal MMCs. A simple power control arithmetic of this transformer will cause the increase of the size, weight and
converter is presented. The proposed converter inherits the cost, especially in offshore wind power. In [7]-[9], three
merits of MMC and achieves a high efficiency high step-up transformerless converters are introduced. Half-bridge
ratio DC-DC conversion without using heavy transformers. modules replaced switches to make up a bidirectional
Simulation results in PSCAD validates the feasibility of the buck/boost converter [7], this can solve the problem
converter. caused by switches in series connection, but it need
working in high switching frequency and large
Keywords—HVDC grid connection, Flying-capacitor inductances. A double-T DC-DC modular multilevel
modular multilevel converter, High ratio converter presented in [8] avoids high switching frequency
and large inductances, but it has higher loss. Flying-
I. INTRODUCTION capacitors displaced the transformer of converter in [6],
and then it became a new converter presented in [9].
Compared with HVAC transmission, HVDC However, this converter would run with high loss while
transmission has the advantages in long-distance bulk- the voltage ratio is too low or too high.
power transmission and connecting two ac grids at
different frequencies or phase counts. With the increase of Based on modifying the converter in [9], this paper
the two-terminal HVDC transmissions, HVDC grids are presents a flying-capacitor modular multilevel converter
the wave of the future. In the HVDC grids, the HVDC DC- that is intended for two-terminal HVDC transmission and
DC converter is the key component to connect two even interconnecting HVDC grids with two or more voltage
more HVDC transmission lines with different voltages. In levels. The proposed converter possesses the following
two-terminal HVDC transmission, a high step-up DC-DC advantages: 1) modularity, increase of fault-tolerance and
converter becomes an increasingly popular option. easy to expand capacity; 2) without transformers or
coupled inductors, decrease of size and weight; 3) low
In recent years, scholars present plenty of high-power switching frequency, the switching loss is reduced greatly;
high-voltage DC-DC converters. According to whether or 4) continuous currents at all the inputs/outputs; 5) simple
not these converters are modular, they could be divided control algorithm to manage internal MMCs; 6) high
into modular converter and non-modular converter. efficiency, the high voltage utilization of all the MMCs;
Converters presented in [1]-[3] are non-modular.
Reference [1] presented a step-up resonant switched-
capacitor converter, all its switches and diodes work in soft II. PROPOSED CONVERTER
switching condition. In [2] and [3], two kinds of multilevel
DC-DC converters are presented, which use many flying- A. Circuit Architecture
capacitors and one or two inductors to achieve a high step- Fig. 1(a) shows the circuit configuration of single-
up conversion by changing the switches’ duty cycle. Both phase flying-capacitor modular multilevel converter (FC-
of converters need to balance the capacitor voltages. When MMC). It consists of plenty of MMCs and flying
individual power switches fault, modularity can keep the capacitors. As Fig. 1(b) shows, each MMC consists of
converter working to improve the reliability of HVDC many half-bridge sub-modules in series and buffer
grids. So modular DC-DC converters presented in [4]-[9] inductors. There are two DC ports and one ac port in the
have overwhelming advantage in HVDC. Converters in MMC. The MMCs are connected in series by connecting
references [4]-[6] use transformer. In [4] two front to front their DC ports. The ac ports of these MMCs are connected
three-phase modular multilevel converters (MMC) and one to a chain of flying capacitors. Other sub-modules of
three-phase transformer constitute one modular multilevel MMC apply to this converter, but half bridge sub-module
DC-DC converter, which owns all the advantages of MMC is a preferred option because of lower power losses. There
are a number of DC ports in single-phase FC-MMC and

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 2018 IEEE 7th International Conference on Power and Energy (PECon)

P Pdcup T

SM MMC
MMC MMC
P SM
CF
MMC ic idc +
CF
MMC SM MMC vdc
CF P MMC
SM ia ib
MMC -
Pac CF
P
Block
CF SM
MMC
P SM MMC
CF S C CF
SM MMC
MMC S MMC
P SM MMC
CF
Pdcl ow MMC
MMC
(a) (b)
T
Fig.1 (a) Singe-phase proposed FC-MMC (b) Circuit of MMC
Fig.3 The structure of a block

voltages, the voltages of flying-capacitor equals to the DC

output voltages of the MMCs. While the converter works,
MMC = only the ac current passes through the flying capacitors. It
CF makes the average voltages of flying capacitors remain
unchanged.
Generally, FC-MMC should be multi-phase, because
MMC
that can eliminate ac component of DC output and is
MMC = MMC
MMC MMC beneficial for expansion of converter capacity and pre-
charging of all the capacitors. In multi-phase FC-MMC,
flying capacitors consist of some parallel capacitors, and a
Fig.2 The structure of flying-capacitors and MMC in a three- number of single-phase MMCs compose a multi-phase
phase FC-MMC MMC by connecting their DC ports. In this paper, we
choose three-phase FC-MMC as the example due to the
the lowest DC port connects to the ground. While the developed control of three-phase system. Fig. 2 shows the
number of MMCs equals two, this converter becomes the structure of flying-capacitors and MMC in a three-phase
converter introduced in [9], which means it is also one FC-MMC.
kind of FC-MMCs. It works efficiently while the voltage
ratio is near 1:2. However, when the voltage ratio is too B. Principles of Operation
low or too high, its efficiency becomes below because the In usual not all the DC ports are used. Besides the
amplitude modulation index k defined in [10] of one highest DC port and the lowest one, one of the other DC
internal MMC is too low. In order to achieve higher ports must be used at least. All the unused DC ports are
amplitude modulation indexes of all inter MMCs, FC- dangling. The DC ports that are connected to DC grids or
MMC could change its numbers of MMCs to adapt the ground are defined as the DC terminal. The internal
different voltage radios. After the numbers of MMCs is MMCs can use all existing control including the power
designed, the DC output voltage changes in a smaller decoupling control, capacitor voltage-balance control and
range, which means the FC-MMC sacrifices the voltage circulating current suppressing control and so on. Each
regulation to exchange the high efficiency. Hence, FC- MMC is an independently controllable converter.
MMC applies in the situations of relatively fixed output Therefore, ac ports of MMCs could be treated as power
voltage, especially in HVDC grids connection. Compared system buses. We can use the control method of power
with MMC under the same voltage, FC-MMC does not system to manage the buses. It is worth noting that in order
increase the cost of devices. It is a recombination of the to facilitate the analysis, the MMCs between two adjacent
sub-modules inside the same scale MMC and some flying- DC terminals are defined as a block. A block of three-
capacitors. phase FC-MMC is shown in Fig. 3. The MMCs in the
The initial voltages of flying-capacitors are pre- same block shares the same DC currents idc, because all the
charged to half the sum of two corresponding connecting currents that flow to flying-capacitors are AC current.
MMCs’ DC output voltages. Usually all the MMCs are According to power balance, for each three-phase MMC,
designed to have the same DC output voltage for higher we can get:
amplitude modulation index and lower power losses.
Obviously when all the MMCs owns the same DC output vdc idc = va ia + vb ib + vc ic = v d id + vq iq (1)

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 2018 IEEE 7th International Conference on Power and Energy (PECon)

TABLE I. CIRCUIT PARAMETERS

Start

Terminal voltage(1/2) VT1 /VT2 100/20 kV

power bus no slack block yes slack bus yes Power rating(1/2) PT1 /PT2 -40/40 MW
no
yes no Arm inductor of MMC L 5 mH
V d : bas e d o n t h e Vd : the same d-axis Vd : the same d-axis Vd: constant
calculation of d-axis vo ltage o f po w er voltage of slack bus SM number of MMC NV 20
currents loop bus
V q : bas e d o n t h e V q : bas e d on th e V q : bas ed o n t h e Vq: zero SM capacitance CSM 5000 μF
calculation of q-axis calculation of q-axis calculation of q-axis
currents loop currents loop currents loop
SM DC voltage VC 2 kV
Fig.4 Flow chart of operation
Flying-capacitor capacitance CF 3000 μF

Ac frequency f 150 Hz
iT1
T1 Carrier frequency fr 600 Hz

MMC
MMC 1
MMC
CF 2kA
i
T2
MMC
MMC 2
i
T1
0kA

MMC Block 1 21kV

V
Cfa
1-4
CF
20kV
MMC 3
19kV
MMC i 1-4
a
CF 1kA

MMC
MMC 4
0
-1kA
i 5
iT2 a

MMC T2 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9 1

CF (s)
MMC Block 2 Fig.6 Simulation results
MMC 5

Fig.5 Three-phase five-MMC FC-MMC on the DC output currents of terminals, the power control
system calculates the d-axis referential currents of block 1
and MMC 1 is defined as the power bus. The d-axis
FC-MMC is designed for DC-DC conversion, the iq referential currents of the MMC 1 are controlled to their d-
should controlled to be zero because it will increase the axis referential currents by decoupling control, then the d-
power loss. However, if the d-axis voltages of MMCs in axis voltages of MMCs 2-4 follow the MMC 1’s. The q-
the same block are different, it will bring the q-axis axis currents of MMCs 1-4 are controlled to be zero
currents, because they are connected by the flying- separately by decoupling control.
capacitors. As s a result, the d-axis voltages of MMCs in
the same block are equal. Then from (1): III. SIMULATON VERICATION
vdc idc = v d id + vq ⋅ 0 (2) A model of a three-phase five-MMC 80MW FC-MMC
that are shown in Fig.5 is simulated in the PSCAD
Therefore, the d-axis currents will be the same and the software environment to verify the feasibility of the FC-
q-axis voltage could be controlled freely to keep the q-axis MMC. It simulates that the low voltage generation side T2
currents zero. As a result in a block, only one MMC is transmit energies to high voltage transmission side T1. The
defined as the power bus, which could control its d-axis circuit parameters are laid out in Table I. Plus and minus
voltage based on the given d-axis currents. It shares its d- of power represent the direction of power transmission.
axis voltage to other MMCs in the same block. One block The capacitors in this simulation are pre-charged to their
is selected to be the slack block, which means the d-axis rating voltages. Simulation results show in Fig.6. The
voltages of MMCs in this block are fixed and the power referential currents are changed in time period of 0.5-0.7s.
bus in the slack block is defined as the slack bus, which Power transported from terminal 2 to terminal 1 raises up
means the voltage of this MMC are fixed sinusoidal in time period of 0.5-0.7s. From Fig. 6 as we can see,
voltages and its q-axis voltage Vq equals to zero. Fig. 4 while the power is raising up, the flying-capacitors
shows the control flow chart. voltages and the MMCs output currents in phase a are also
raising up. Because the output currents of the MMCs 1-4
For example, a three-phase five-MMC FC-MMC in phase a are almost the same, so it is hard to see them
shows in Fig.5. The DC port 1 and 5 are chosen as the DC clearly in the figure .This proves the validity of the power
terminals to connect the DC grids. All the five MMCs are control and this converter is suitable for the DC-DC
designed as the same, so the voltage ratios of DC grids T2 HVDC transmission.
and T1 is 1:5. Then MMCs 1-4 are defined as block 1 and
MMC 5 is defined as block 2. The block 2 is defined as the
slack block and MMC 5 is set as the slack bus, which IV. CONCLUSION
means it decides the ac frequency of the converter. Base This paper proposed a flying-capacitor modular
multilevel converter for multi-port DC grids

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 2018 IEEE 7th International Conference on Power and Energy (PECon)

interconnection and HVDC transmission. The proposed

converter inherits the merits of MMC and achieves a high
efficiency high step-up ratio DC-DC conversion without
using transformers. A simple control strategy was
proposed to control DC currents of each terminal
independently. Simulation model on PSCAD software was
built, and the simulation results verify the feasibility of the
proposed converter.

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