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Enhancing the ride through capability of dc-link voltage in npc multilevel unified power-flow controllers
1. ENHANCING THE RIDE-THROUGH CAPABILITY OF DC-LINK VOLTAGE IN NPC
MULTILEVEL UNIFIED POWER-FLOW CONTROLLERS
ABSTRACT
Multilevel converters are attractive for unified power-flow controller (UPFC)
applications, due to their high-voltage and power capability. Among multilevel topologies, the
three-level neutral-point-clamped (NPC) converter allows back-to-back connection as the UPFC
shunt and series converters. Besides the pulse width-modulated (PWM) multilevel control
schemes, UPFCs require constant dc-link voltage and balanced voltages in the NPC multilevel dc
capacitors. This paper proposes three main contributions to increase the dc-link voltage
steadiness of multilevel UPFCs under line faults: 1) decoupled active and reactive linear power
controllers; 2) real-time PWM generation; and 3) double balancing of dc capacitor voltages. A
case study using part of the Portuguese transmission network is presented. The results show the
effectiveness of the real-time PWM generation and dc-link capacitor voltages balancing included
in NPC series and shunt converters to keep the dc-link voltage steadiness under line faults,
overall enhancing the UPFC ride-through capability.