DC-Link Neutral Point Control for 3L-NPC Converters Utilizing Selective Harmonic Elimination PWM

Abstract

Selective harmonic elimination–pulsewidth modulation (SHE–PWM) is a modulation technique widely used to improve the efficiency and harmonic content in medium-voltage high-power converters. Among these converters, the three-level neutral-point-clamped (3L-NPC) converter is one of the most utilized topologies. However, the 3L-NPC converter requires a proper balancing of dc-link capacitor voltages. This article presents a control technique, based on pulse shifting method, to regulate the neutral point voltage when SHE-PWM is utilized. The proposed technique performs well with any power factor and it can also be directly applied to T-type converters and easily extrapolated to other multilevel topologies. The proposed method is experimentally validated in a scaled-down power converter and a full-scale medium-voltage 3L-NPC converter.