Results of Investigation of Multicell Converters With Balancing Circuit—Part I

This paper presents the results of an investigation of the multilevel multicell converters with a passive RLC balancing circuit applied for the maintenance of the voltage sharing on the capacitive sources of the converters. The topologies of DC/DC, AC/AC, DC/AC, and AC/DC multicell converters were analyzed. For the purpose of multilevel modulation, a multicell converter employs several capacitors that are connected to every cell-the flying capacitors, charged to a given level of voltage. An inadequate relation between the voltages across the flying capacitors (the unbalance state) results in the increase of the voltages above their rated values across the switches. An RLC series circuit (a balancing circuit) with the properly selected resonance frequency is connected in parallel to the load in order to eliminate the unbalance. The balancing process with the use of passive RLC depends on the configuration and parameters of the balancing circuit, the parameters of the converter, as well as on the operating conditions. This paper presents the mathematical description of both the converter and the balancing process, the balancing circuit approach in the different topologies of the multicell converters, a selection of the balancing circuit parameters, and the analysis of the improper control conditions.