Title :
Operation of Cascaded H-Bridge Multilevel Converters for Large-Scale Photovoltaic Power Plants Under Bridge Failures
Author :
Yifan Yu ; Konstantinou, Georgios ; Hredzak, Branislav ; Agelidis, Vassilios G.
Author_Institution :
Sch. of Electr. Eng. & Telecommun., Univ. of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW, Australia
Abstract :
A cascaded H-bridge (CHB) converter is one of the viable options for next-generation large-scale photovoltaic (PV) power conversion. Owing to the increased number of components involved, converter reliability and fault-tolerant control are important issues. A CHB converter must also manage unequal power generation among bridges, which is inherent in PV applications because of unequal solar irradiance and/or module temperatures. This paper proposes a fault-tolerant strategy, which maintains balanced three-phase grid currents during faults with unequal power generation in healthy H-bridges. The effectiveness of the presented fault-tolerant control is verified using the results obtained from a 430-V 10-kW laboratory prototype.
Keywords :
bridge circuits; fault tolerant control; photovoltaic power systems; power convertors; power generation control; power generation faults; power generation reliability; CHB; cascaded H-bridge multilevel converter; converter reliability; fault tolerant control; module temperature; next generation large-scale photovoltaic power plant; power 10 kW; three-phase grid current balancing; unequal power generation management; unequal solar irradiance; voltage 430 V; Bridge circuits; Circuit faults; Fault tolerance; Fault tolerant systems; Photovoltaic systems; AC-DC power converters; Alternating current (ac)???direct current (dc) power converters; cascaded H-bridge (CHB) converter; cascaded H-bridge converter; fault-tolerant operation; multilevel converter; photovoltaic (PV); photovoltaics;
Journal_Title :
Industrial Electronics, IEEE Transactions on
DOI :
10.1109/TIE.2015.2434995
