Capacitor voltage ripple shaping in modular multilevel converters allowing for operating region extension

The second-order harmonic in the circulating current of a modular multilevel converter (M2C) influences the capacitor voltage ripple. If no measures are taken to control it, it is not possible to operate the converter with unity modulation index. An open-loop method that precalculates the instantaneous values of the circulating current and the capacitor voltages is used, in order to control the circulating current. A desired second-order harmonic is intentionally induced in the circulating current in order to make the peak of the capacitor voltage coincide with the maximum requested voltage, aiming either to extend the limits of the instantaneous available voltage or avoid unnecessarily high capacitor voltages. A method for numerical estimation of the appropriate amplitude and phase of the induced second-order harmonic is described. The method is experimentally evaluated on a three-phase down-scaled laboratory prototype. From the experiments it was found that significantly improved operating conditions could be obtained.