A Systematic Study on the Harmonic Overlap Effects for DC/AC Converters under Low Switching Frequency Modulation

Abstract

In most high power industrial applications, the low switching frequency modulations (LSFM) are usually implemented to reduce power loss and heat dissipation pressure. However, there are some unexpected influences caused by the low order harmonic sinusoidal pulse width modulation (SPWM), such as the imbalanced submodule power in cascaded half-bridge inverter (CHB) and limited output power capability in H-bridge neutral-point-clamped (HNPC) converter. This paper starts by generalizing the basic characteristic of two-level SPWM, then deeply investigates the influences of low-frequency modulation on the operation of the circuits. They are classified into three mechanisms and generally named as harmonic overlap effect (HOE). The corresponding solutions to copy with the mechanisms are proposed and verified in some topologies through high-power simulations in simulations. In addition, a comprehensive summary of the influences and solutions of these effects on typical high power converters is drawn. The design rules of the modulation schemes for multilevel voltage source converters (VSCs) at low switching frequency are also proposed.