Neutral-Point Voltage Balance Control of Three-Level Converter Based on Selection Method of Dynamical Adjustment for Small Voltage Vector

Abstract

The balance control of neutral-point voltage (NPV) is important in the three-level converter. In this paper, this problem is studied by taking the VIENNA circuit as an example. The deviation of NPV is essentially caused by mismatch between the charging and discharging time of two series capacitors by the neutral-point current flowing into or out of the DC side. The unbalanced NPV will lead to unbalanced voltage stress of two capacitors and power switches and may cause overvoltage damage to both and also increase the total harmonic distortion (THD) and harmonic components in the AC current. In this paper, by analyzing the role and effect of a small-voltage vector on NPV, a control strategy based on the selection method of dynamical adjustment for a small vector is proposed. By judging the fluctuation of NPV, different small vectors are dynamically selected to act to adjust the NPV. For verification, the proposed strategy is compared with the traditional zero-sequence voltage injection (ZSV-J) method through simulation and experiment. Compared with ZSV-J, the THD of AC current is decreased by about 27.2%, the efficiency is increased by about 1.66%, and the adjustment speed of NPV is increased by about 50%. Therefore, the feasibility and advantages of the strategy are verified.