Mission Profile Emulator for Individual Sub-module in Cascaded H-bridge STATCOM

• Published in: 2023 IEEE PELS Students and Young Professionals Symposium (SYPS) pp. 1 - 4
• Main Authors: Wang, Moxi, Zhang, Yalin, Han, Xingjun, Ma, Ke
• Format: Conference Proceeding
• Language: English
• Published: IEEE 27-08-2023
• Subjects: Automatic voltage control; cascaded H-bridge (CHB); Emulation; Generators; Integrated circuit reliability; mission profile emulator (MPE); Multilevel converters; reliability; Reliability engineering; static synchronous compensator (STATCOM); Topology
• DOI: 10.1109/SYPS59767.2023.10268131

The cascaded H-bridge (CHB) multilevel converter is a leading topology for medium/high power static synchronous compensator (STATCOM). The reliability of its sub-modules (SMs) is crucial to ensure the reliable and stable operation of the entire system. However, the existing test schemes of SMs are either expensive or deficient in precision. Therefore, this paper proposes a mission profile emulator (MPE) for SMs in CHB STATCOM, designed to faithfully simulate the accurate mission profiles of tested SMs for conducting reliability tests. Firstly, analytical expressions for the current and voltage quantities in CHB STATCOM are proposed as the reference values for the MPE. Then, the circuit configuration and control strategy of the MPE are explicated. A CHB structure is utilized as the current generator to minimize current ripple and lower the requirement for the filter inductor and the DC voltage source. Finally, simulation and scaled-down experiments have confirmed the effectiveness of the proposed testing scheme.