TY - JOUR
T1 - Delta-Connected Cascaded H-Bridge Multilevel Converters for Large-Scale Photovoltaic Grid Integration
AU - Yu, Yifan
AU - Konstantinou, Georgios
AU - Townsend, Christopher D.
AU - Aguilera, Ricardo P.
AU - Agelidis, Vassilios G.
PY - 2017
Y1 - 2017
N2 - The cascaded H-bridge (CHB) converter is becoming a promising candidate for use in next generation large-scale photovoltaic (PV) power plants. However, solar power generation in the three converter phase-legs can be significantly unbalanced, especially in a large geographically-dispersed plant. The power imbalance between the three phases defines a limit for the injection of balanced three-phase currents to the grid. This paper quantifies the performance of, and experimentally confirms, the recently proposed delta-connected CHB converter for PV applications as an alternative configuration for large-scale PV power plants. The required voltage and current overrating for the converter is analytically developed and compared against the star-connected counterpart. It is shown that the delta-connected CHB converter extends the balancing capabilities of the star-connected CHB and can accommodate most imbalance cases with relatively small overrating. Experimental results from a laboratory prototype are provided to validate the operation of the delta-connected CHB converter under various power imbalance cases.
AB - The cascaded H-bridge (CHB) converter is becoming a promising candidate for use in next generation large-scale photovoltaic (PV) power plants. However, solar power generation in the three converter phase-legs can be significantly unbalanced, especially in a large geographically-dispersed plant. The power imbalance between the three phases defines a limit for the injection of balanced three-phase currents to the grid. This paper quantifies the performance of, and experimentally confirms, the recently proposed delta-connected CHB converter for PV applications as an alternative configuration for large-scale PV power plants. The required voltage and current overrating for the converter is analytically developed and compared against the star-connected counterpart. It is shown that the delta-connected CHB converter extends the balancing capabilities of the star-connected CHB and can accommodate most imbalance cases with relatively small overrating. Experimental results from a laboratory prototype are provided to validate the operation of the delta-connected CHB converter under various power imbalance cases.
KW - AC–DC power converters
KW - Cascaded Hbridge (CHB) converter
KW - Multilevel converter
KW - Photovoltaic (PV)
U2 - 10.1109/TIE.2016.2645885
DO - 10.1109/TIE.2016.2645885
M3 - Journal article
SN - 0278-0046
VL - 64
SP - 8877
EP - 8886
JO - IEEE Transactions on Industrial Electronics
JF - IEEE Transactions on Industrial Electronics
ER -