PWM CONVERTERS AND APPLICATIONS

(Module 1)

Dr.Josephine.R.L

Assistant Professor

Department of EEE

NIT Tiruchirappalli - 620015

Module -1
❑ AC-DC converters
❑ Ideal rectifier properties
❑ Realization of near ideal rectifier
❑ Rectifier system incorporating Boost DC-DC converter

❑ DC-AC converters
❑ Single-phase inverters
❑ Three-phase inverters

❑ PWM methods
❑ Sine PWM
❑ Space vector PWM

❑ Multilevel inverters
❑ Diode clamped inverter
❑ Flying capacitor
AC-DC converters
❑ Ideal rectifier properties
❑ Realization of near ideal rectifier
❑ Rectifier system incorporating Boost DC-DC converter
Properties of Ideal Rectifier
❑ Ideal single-phase rectifier presents a resistive load to the ac system.
❑ Unity power factor rectification is the result.

❑ When referred to AC side, it is necessary to determine the equivalent resistance, as

an equivalent of unity power factor circuit.
❑ This equivalent resistance is the desired value of resistance that will ensure unity
power factor and the process of determining it is as follows.
Properties of Ideal Rectifier
❑ An emulated resistance for unity power factor from input port is taken as Re.
❑ Here, Re is a function of control voltage that may be duty cycle of DC-DC converter.

(a)
(b) (c)
Input port R emulation
Emulated resistance is Ideal rectifier equivalent model
controllable
Properties of Ideal Rectifier-Contd..
❑ Ideal single-phase rectifier presents a resistive load to the ac system.
❑ Unity power factor rectification is the result.

❑ Considering the rectifier as lossless, so power flowing through Re must flow through output
port.
❑ Instantaneous power throughput is given by {Re(Vcontrol(t)) - Re as a function of Vcontrol}

❑ P(t) is dependent only on vac(t) and the control input vcontrol(t) and is independent of the
characteristics of the load connected to the output port.
❑ Hence, the output port must behave as a source of constant power, obeying the relationship
Properties of Ideal Rectifier-Contd..
❑ An Ideal single-phase rectifier output port is connected to a resistive load of value R,
then

❑ Vrms and Irms -dc output rms voltages and currents

Ideal rectifier equivalent model
❑ Vac,rms and Iac,rms - ac input rms voltages and currents
❑ Hence, the equivalent resistance can be determined as shown in the above formula.
Realization of Near Ideal Rectifier
❑ A near ideal filter is the practical realization of ideal rectifier.
❑ To achieve unity power factor, a closed loop control of the power electronic converter is
employed.
❑ A controlled rectifier can be used to achieve unity power factor by employing PWM methods
such as symmetrical triggering.
❑ A simple alternative for the controlled rectifier is using an uncontrolled rectifier with
controlled DC-DC converter.
❑ The realization of near ideal rectifier using DC-DC converter is implemented by taking the DC-
DC converter as an equivalent of tapped transformer with variable turns ratio.
❑ The turns ratio is a function of duty cycle of DC-DC converter.
❑ A term should be introduced to identify the relation between rectified voltage (DC voltage)
and actual input AC voltage and is called conversion ratio.
Realization of Near Ideal Rectifier
❑ Feedback can be employed to cause a converter that exhibits controlled dc
transformer characteristics to obey the ideal rectifier equations.
❑ In the single-phase case, the simplest and least expensive approach employs a full-wave
diode rectifier network, cascaded by a dc–dc converter, as in figure below.

❑ The dc–dc converter is represented by an ideal dc transformer

Realization of Near Ideal Rectifier-Contd..
❑ A control network varies the duty cycle, as necessary to cause the converter input
current ig(t)to be proportional to the applied input voltage vg(t).
❑ The effective turns ratio of the ideal transformer then varies with time. The waveforms are
controlled with modulation index M(t) as shown in the graphs.
Realization of Near Ideal Rectifier-Contd..
❑ A control network varies the duty cycle, as necessary to cause the converter input
current ig(t)to be proportional to the applied input voltage vg(t).
❑ vg(t) - rectified voltage, vac(t) - applied input voltage

❑It is desired that the converter output voltage be a constant dc value v(t) = V.
❑The converter conversion ratio must therefore be

❑When sin(wt) = 1, M =V/Vm

❑This converter conversion ratio is a key factor to develop the desired output voltage
without compromising unity power factor operation.
Realization of Near Ideal Rectifier-Contd..
❑ To the extent that the dc–dc converter is ideal (i.e., if the losses can be neglected and
there is negligible low-frequency energy storage), the instantaneous input and output
powers are equal.
❑ Hence, the output current i(t) in the figure is given by

Note: Here Re (referred from input side) is considered (Not R as shown in diagram) as an equivalent
resistance for the unity power factor operation, as determined in ideal rectifier properties.
Rectifier system based on the boost
converter
❑ The following example shows a DC-DC boost converter for unity power factor operation on AC side. Assuming
a continuous mode of Boost converter, (practice discontinuous mode on your own)
❑Ideally, the boost converter can produce any conversion ratio between one and infinity.

❑Hence, the boost converter can produce the M(d(t)) if V ≥ VM.

❑Duty ratio should follow M(d(t)) = 1/(1 − d(t)). This implies that the duty ratio should follow the function
Rectifier system based on the boost
converter-Contd..
❑ The boost converter operates in the continuous conduction mode provided that the inductor current
ripple

❑Current ripple is greater than the average inductor current,

❑Hence, the converter operates in CCM when

❑Solution for Re for continuous conduction mode leads to

Note: Here Re for boost converter is realized

to ensure unity power factor operation on
ac side of converter.
Rectifier system based on the boost
converter-Contd..
❑ To obtain a general plot, we can normalize the input current and input voltage as follows:

❑ The modulation index of DC-DC converter with respect to

current reference for unity power factor operation is
plotted here and can be clearly seen that the crossing
point of discontinuous mode (DCM) and continuous mode
(CCM).

❑ It can be concluded that the mode of operation (either

CCM or DCM) is quite important before determining the
emulated resistance (Re) for unity power factor operation.
DC-AC converters
❑ Single-phase inverters
❑ Three-phase inverters
Single-phase inverters
❑The principle of synthesizing a dc voltage for dc-motor drives can be extended for
synthesizing low-frequency ac voltages.
❑So long as the frequency f1 of the ac being synthesized is two or three orders of
magnitude smaller than the switching frequency fs.
❑This is the case in most ac-motor drives and UPS applications where f1 is at 50 Hz (or is of the order of
50 Hz) and the switching frequency is a few tens of kHz.
❑The control voltage, which is compared with a triangular waveform voltage to generate switching
signals, varies slowly at the frequency f1 of the ac voltage being synthesized.

❑Therefore, with f1 ,, fs, during a switching-frequency time-period Ts (=1/fs), the control

voltage can be considered pseudo-dc, and the analysis and synthesis for the converter
for dc-drives applies (for four-quadrant application).
Single-phase inverters-Contd..
❑Fig(a) represents a single-phase inverter and Fig(b) represents its equivalent averaged switching cycle
representation.

❑The switch control of inverter is considered as controlled transformer equivalent as shown in Fig (b). The
turns ratio are functions of two different duty cycles da and db.

❑The determination of average value of input current is required to understand the actual power transfer from
DC side

(a) Single-phase inverter circuit (b) switching-cycle averaged representation

Single-phase inverters-Contd..
❑The switching-cycle averaged representation consists of two switching power-poles, the inductance of
the low-pass filter establishes the current-ports of the two power-poles.

❑The switching-cycle averaged voltages being synthesized are shown in figure below, which in this
application are sinusoidal at the line-frequency f1.

❑The common-mode voltage is

❑The pole output voltages with respect to a hypothetical neutral “n” are
Single-phase inverters-Contd..
❑The switching-cycle averaged voltages are given by

❑ Assuming that the switching-cycle averaged ac-side

current is sinusoidal and lagging behind the output
ac voltage vo(t) = Vo sin ω1t by an angle φ1

❑Assuming the ripple in the output current to be

negligible, the average output power equals the
product of the switching-cycle averaged output
voltage and the switching cycle averaged output
current.
Single-phase inverters-Contd..
❑Assuming the converter to be lossless, the switching-cycle averaged input current can be calculated by
equating the input power to the average power

❑ which shows that the switching-cycle averaged current drawn from the dc-bus has a dc component Id
that is responsible for the average power transfer to the ac side of the converter, and a second harmonic
component id2 (at twice the frequency of the ac output),
Three-phase inverters
❑Fig(a) represents a three-phase inverter and Fig(b) represents its equivalent averaged switching cycle
representation

(a) Three-phase inverter circuit (b) switching-cycle averaged representation

van = Vph sin(ω1t), vbn = Vph sin(ω1t-120o), vcn = Vph sin(ω1t-2400),

Three-phase inverters-Contd..
❑Van, Vbn and Vcn are the three-phase balanced voltages. In series with these, common-mode voltages are
added such that

❑The common-mode voltages do not appear across the load; only van, vbn, and vcn appear across the load
with respect to the load-neutral.
❑This can be illustrated by applying the principle of superposition to the circuit of Figure(a).
❑By “suppressing” van, vbn and vcn, only equal common-mode voltages are present in each phase, as
shown in Figure(b).
Three-phase inverters-Contd..

Unlike in single-phase, three-phase inverter has DC switching current has DC component only.
PWM methods
❑Pulse-width modulation methods
❑Sine PWM
❑Space vector PWM
PWM method
❑As shown in the figure, a,b and c are three- legs of
three-phase inverter. Assuming a two-level three-phase
voltage source inverter. If qa is 1, upper half of leg a is
On with lower-half of leg-a in OFF state and if qa is zero,
upper half of leg a is OFF with lower-half of leg-a in ON
state.

❑ qa, qb and qc or da, db and dc are the digital switches

that are commonly controlled by PWM methods
Sine PWM method
❑ In Sine-PWM a sine reference wave is compared with a triangular wave as shown below, to generate pulses for the
switches in the inverter. The basic analysis of SPWM is carried out in terms of common mode voltage is in the
following slides.

vref

s1
Vdc/2

S1 ’

Vdc/2
Sine PWM method (Three-phase)
❑ In Sine-PWM (similar to converters for dc-motor drives and 1-phase UPS), the switching cycle averaged output of
power poles, vaN , vbN and vcN , have a constant dc common-mode voltage vcom = Vd /2 around which van, vbn, and
vcn can vary sinusoidally as shown in the below figure.
❑ The duty cycles of the three-phase signals are determined as follows.
Sine PWM method-Contd..
❑ The plots of vaN , vbN and vcN each divided by Vd , are also the plots of da, db and dc within the limits of 0 and 1.

❑As can be seen from figure below, at the limit, vaN can become a maximum of Vd/2 and hence
the maximum allowable value of the phase-voltage peak is
SVPWM method
❑V1, V3 and V6 are the maximum voltages of phase a, b and c and =010 =110
are displaced by 1200 as shown in vector diagram.

❑ The below diagram shows different switching possibilities of

inverter.. For sine wave a perfect circle is required as shown in
vector diagram.
=011 V1=100

=001 =101
V2=110

1
V0= 000 V1=100
V8 = 111
SVPWM method-Contd..
❑The switch in Fig(a) is operated such that the voltage across the load developed as shown
in Fig (b). As the switching is done for a specific time, an average voltage across the load
will be developed based on the switching time.

❑Similarly, for a three-phase multiple switches are operated to achieve vectorial or

sinusoidal voltage. Ts *Vref =T1 V1 +T2 V2 +T01 V7 +T01 V8
❑Assume, the reference voltage is in sector 1. Vref is generated By operating the
voltage vectors V1, V2, V7, V8.
❑All these vectors are operated for specific time to get a portion of a circle (c)
❑Here, V1 and V2 are displaced by 600
and operating between them for different
timings will move the reference voltage vector between them.
V1=100

Ts *Vref =T1 V1 +T2 V2 +T01 V7 +T01 V8

(b)
(a)
SVPWM method-Contd..
❑Assume the reference voltage vector is in sector 2. The Vref is generated By operating the voltage vectors V3, V2,
V7, V8. Once the cycle of operating between these vector will be as in mode-1 and after the completion of mode-1, it
will move as in mode-2. These are shown in mode-1 and mode-2 of sector -2 operation.

❑The sequence of switching operation is shown in Fig (a). The three-phase voltage vectors are shown here.

(a)
SVPWM method-Contd..

SECTOR 1 SECTOR 2
SVPWM method-Contd..
To undergo the SVPWM method, the following steps should be followed.
Generate reference voltages
◦ Generate three sinusoidal signals

Identify the sector

◦ Convert a, b, c to d-q reference frame
◦ Find 𝜃 = tan−1 𝑞Τ𝑑

𝐶𝑎𝑙𝑐𝑢𝑙𝑎𝑡𝑒 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑡𝑖𝑚𝑒 𝑒𝑥𝑝𝑟𝑒𝑠𝑠𝑖𝑜𝑛𝑠 𝑓𝑜𝑟 𝑣𝑜𝑙𝑡𝑎𝑔𝑒 𝑣𝑒𝑐𝑡𝑜𝑟𝑠

3 𝑑 2 +𝑞 2 𝜋 3 𝑑 2 +𝑞 2 𝜋
𝑇1 = ∗ sin 𝑆𝑛 ∗ − 𝜃 , 𝑇2 = ∗ sin 𝜃 − (𝑆𝑛 − 1) ∗ ,
𝑉𝑑𝑐 ∗𝑓𝑠 3 𝑉𝑑𝑐 ∗𝑓𝑠 3
1
𝑇0 = − 𝑇1 − 𝑇2 /2 , where Sn = sector number
𝑓𝑠

Generate the switching pulses based on the time instances

SVPWM method-Analysis
❑The waveforms can be divided into six sectors, but initially we will concentrate on only sector 1, shown
hatched in Figure (c) and magnified in Figure (b), and later we will generalize the results to all sectors.

❑In sector 1 shown in Figure (b), the voltage for phase-a is maximum, for phase-c is minimum, and for
phase-b is in the middle.

❑Therefore, only the poles for the maximum (phase-a) and the minimum (pole-c) are shown in Figure (a).

(b) (c)
(a)
SVPWM method-Analysis
❑At the limit, it is possible that vLL = Vd, which is achievable only if da = 1 and dc = 0, remembering that a
duty-ratio is limited in a range between 0 and 1.
❑Therefore, at any other instant, one of the ways, a lower value of the line-to-line voltage can be obtained by
decreasing the phase-a duty-ratio da below 1 by an amount Δd, and by increasing the phase-c duty-ratio dc above
0 by an equal amount Δd.

❑ The line-line voltage will be reduced below Vd by an amount equal to (2Δd)Vd.

SVPWM method-Analysis
❑Considering the pole output voltages in the figure below, which contain
the common-mode voltage

❑ Upon solving the above equations,

❑The above equation is valid only for sector 1. The generalized

expression is given by
SVPWM method-Analysis
❑ the common-mode voltage in SV-PWM consists of Vd/2 , as in Sine-PWM, plus an extra voltage term
vk(t), where

❑ Therefore, the duty-ratios in an SV-PWM are given as follows:

To convert a DC signal into an AC signal we require fast switching of DC signal giving us multiple levels. This
turns into a staircase wave that is quite close to a sine wave.
There are essentially three types of multilevel inverters:
Cascaded H-Bridges: Using H-Bridge Cascaded multilevel inverters, we can invert up to three voltage levels.
Different positions of switches, determine different voltage levels.
The circuit consists of diodes and switches. This is the most common type of inverter and usually uses
Separate DC sources (SDCs).
However, due to recent advancements, single DC source H-Bridge Cascaded inverters can also be formed.
Diode Clamped: This type of inverter uses capacitors and diodes for inversion. The aim is to convert DC voltage
into capacitor voltage. Proper precautionary measures should be taken in order to avoid over charging of
capacitors.
Flying Capacitor: This is a relatively complicated way of inversion, because the capacitors need to be pre
charged, and is somewhat similar to diode clamped method. The difference is that clamping is done through
capacitors instead of diodes.
Multilevel Inverters
Output Waveforms

The output waveform can be of two types:

Sine wave

Modified sine wave

While converting from DC voltage to AC voltage, there are two methods or modes:

Either we convert the DC signal into Higher-Power DC signal and then convert it into AC.

OR we convert DC to AC at the lower level and then using line frequency we get the required output voltage.
A lot can be said about the potential applications of Multilevel Inverters. They are usually used in industrial
applications. Multilevel inverters are inarguably important in the areas where we need high power. Some areas
of usage are:

Power conditioning

Active Filters

Industrial Motor Drives

Power Grids

Transportation
Multilevel Inverters- Diode clamped

• Advantages:
• All of the phases share a common dc bus,
which minimizes the capacitance requirements
of the converter..
• The capacitors can be pre-charged as a group.
• Efficiency is high for fundamental frequency
switching.
Multilevel Inverters- Capacitor clamped

Advantages:

Phase redundancies are available for balancing the voltage

levels of the capacitors.

• Real and reactive power flow can be controlled.

• The large number of capacitors enables the inverter to ride

through short duration outages and deep voltage sags.