Multilevel Converter Applications in Renewable

Energy Systems
I. INTRODUCTION
Multilevel converter applications have been mostly The very first use of multilevel converters was in
used in renewable energy systems. For example solar, power train and high voltage industrial applications.
wind power, hydroelectric energy, biomass, fuel cells In sense of renewable energy these converters were
and geothermal power etc. The new semiconductor used in utility-scale plants for the first time and still
technologies, power switches having lower prices and they are used on large scale in utility-scale plants in
the demand of current for inverters having high these days [7], [8]. Recently they are going on the
performance have increased the multilevel converters way of single phase PV converters on residential
applications in renewable energy systems. Multilevel scale and this is a very hot topic for research in these
converter is power electronic device which can days [9]. If we roughly divide the single phase
provide required alternating voltage level at the multilevel converters then there are three types of
output. It uses the multiple lower level DC voltages these converters which are.
as an input. 1. NPC (neutral point clamped)
The multilevel converters are very popular among PV 2. CFB (cascaded full bridge)
systems due to its attractive features for example its 3. Custom
waveforms have high quality and nominal power is The electric potential between the ground and the
also high. That is why the researchers have photovoltaic cells in NPC topology is kept fixed by
introduced many inverters such as hybrid multilevel providing a constant potential to the grid through
converters, neutral point clamped converters and neutral wire.
cascade H-bridge converters etc. These converters
have also been used in medium power system
applications and high power system applications. In
PV the multilevel converters give a proper solution
for peopled renewable energy systems. The classical
PV converters include a feature named as grid
frequency transformer and this component is very
heavy and costly between electrical grid and
converter at the interference. We always need
improved efficiency, less weight and less cost. By
removing the grid frequency transformer we get all
these above mentioned benefits but the quality of
output power goes down. It also gives DC current
injection into our grid [1], [2] and creates the ground
leakage current problem [3], [4].
While PV module active parts are electrically
insulated from the frame which is ground connected
but there becomes an AC ground leakage current
path. This path is because of parasitic capacitance
between frame and module. Ground leakage current
is mostly because of variations in the high frequency Fig.1.NPC (neutral point clamped)
of common mode voltage at power converter’s output
[4]. For reduction of harmonic content of common The main advantage of single phase NPC is that it
mode voltage many solutions can be used [5], [6]. resists against ground leakage current but on the
Main goal of multilevel converters is to improve the other hand three phase NPC is not much batter
efficiency and reduce the cost and size and all this against leakage current [10].
can be achieved if we reduce the filter size. The main deficiency of NPC converters regarding to
the full bridge is that they require dual dc link
voltage. For highly computable designs we use the A stand-alone renewable energy system (SARES)
CFB converters. Inside CFB converter almost each should provide the ac current at its output for the
full bridge requires a power supply which should be consumer. Most of the SARES contain an energy
insulated and it should be matching with the field of storage device which is mostly in the form of lead-
multistring PV [11]. CFB converters also have some acid battery banks. Both AC and DC bus modulators
other applications [12]. PV field dc voltage changes provide AC at output for the consumer. A dc bus
constantly in PV applications due to MPPT modulator is shown in the figure.
(maximum power point tracking) and the variation of
the radiation of solar. But the output voltages must be
controlled careless of voltage ratio. This specific
problem have been studied in [13] measuring the full
bridge voltages separately.
The use of renewable energy systems with grid have
been considered a big and important issue in the last
decade and it is due to a large number of usage of
new power plants containing solar PV and wind
energy [14]. The photovoltaic systems follow wind
energy. At the end of 2013 the total power of solar
PV was almost 136GW which were globally
installed, but in 2000 this power was just round about
1.5 GW. From 2008-2013 the annual growth rate of
solar have become almost 40%. In 2013 Germany
was the king of PV energy because 26% of the total
PV energy was installed in Germany. Some other
countries were also producing a huge amount of PV
energy like US, China, Italy, Spain and Japan etc
[15]. There was a solar farm in USA named as topaz Fig.2.DC bus modulator
solar farm which was producing 550 MW of energy
in 2015. In PV installation the most important Both the ac and dc modulator contain wind, PV
technique is “grid connected inverter configuration”. system and battery storage bank. An ac modulator is
The arrangement of PV cells fall into main four shown in below figure.
groups which are.
1. String technology
2. Multi-string technology
3. AC module and AC cell technology
4. Centralized technology
These approaches have some of the advantages and
disadvantages [16], [17]. These approaches will
accommodate many aspects like cost, harmonic
generation, modularity, complexity, reliability,
efficiency, safety and flexibility etc. For residential
installations of PV the string and multistring
configurations are considered as best. By using such
configuration loses which are related to the string
diodes become very small as compared to centralized
technology. However MPPT (maximum power point
tracing) is achievable for all of these strings and it
can be installed in different locations and sizes.
There are different approaches for the Fig.3.AC bus modulator
implementation of string and multistring
technologies. Normally such modules contain DC to The main element in PV hybrid systems is the device
DC converter and solar array which are controlled by which converts the dc voltages of battery into ac
the algorithm of MPPT. Then the output of DC/DC voltages. These dc/ac converters are mostly named as
converters makes a dc voltage which is converted inverters. From the last decade these converters are
into ac by the help of inverter. widely used in industry and uninterruptible power
supplies. SARES are used only if they are adjustable
and reliable. The RES battery inverter has following
characteristics
There are many topologies of multilevel converters
the important ones from these converters are
1. DCMC (diode clamped multilevel
converter)
2. FCMC (flying capacitors multilevel
converters)
3. CMC (cascaded multilevel converters)
From these types the simplest and popular is CMC
converter but it needs the dc sources with isolation
and these sources are not possible without a
transformer. In PV systems there is an availability of
separate dc sources, so we can use the PV systems in
CMC topology [18], [19]. From these above three
topologies CMC is best for renewable energy systems
due to following reasons.
1. No voltage unbalance problem
2. DC- DC converter elimination
3. Flexible at low switching frequency
4. No clamping diodes and capacitors
The CMC has two main levels, which are called 5-
level CMC and 7-level CMC. The diagram of 5-level
converter is given as.
Fig.4.A 5-level multilevel converter
The 5-level and 7- level multilevel converters are
almost similar to each other. The 7-level converter
contains an additional circuit in it as compared to 5-
1. Surge power capacity
2. Most important is reliability
3. Efficiency and no load consumption
level converter. The 5-level converter contains two
capacitors but 7-level contains three capacitors. The
7-level converter contains a full bridge inverter and
also two switches which are bidirectional. The
diagram of 7-level multilevel converter is given as.
Fig.5.A 7-level multilevel converter
High dc bus voltages are required for the flow of
power from PV to grid in 7-level CMC. Both the 5-
level and 7-level CMC contain two main circuits
which are.
1. Auxiliary circuit
2. H-bridge circuit
The H-bridge circuit of both CMC is same but
auxiliary circuit is different. A large number of
semiconductor switches are required in cascaded
multilevel converters to minimize the switching loss,
complexity, cost and space. Multilevel converters
generally synthesize a required ac voltage from many
dc voltage levels. That is why these inverters are
capable of connecting an ac grid with RES either in
parallel or series. These converters can also control
the flow of real and reactive power from a renewable
energy source. A multilevel converter provides static
var compensation when a capacitance is connected in
parallel with the renewable energy source. So the
multilevel converters are very beneficial and
effective for all renewable energy sources.
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