Abstract
This paper presents a fault-tolerant configuration for the modular multilevel converter (MMC). The procedure is able to detect faults in voltage sensors and semiconductor switching devices, and it can reconfigure the system so that it can keep on operating. Both switch and sensor faults can be detected by comparing the output voltage of a set of submodules (SMs), which is measured by a so-called supervisory sensor, with two calculated reference voltages. Faults in the supervisory sensors are also considered. Sensor faults are overcome by using a measuring technique based on estimates that are periodically updated with the voltage measurements of the supervisory sensors. Additional SMs are included in the arms so that the MMC can bypass a faulty SM and continue operating without affecting the output voltage of the phase-leg. Experimental results obtained from a low-power MMC prototype are presented in order to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed techniques.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | 7401086 |
| Pages (from-to) | 39-51 |
| Number of pages | 13 |
| Journal | IEEE Transactions on Power Electronics |
| Volume | 32 |
| Issue number | 1 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - Jan 2017 |
Keywords
- Fault detection
- Modular multilevel converter
- fault localization
- fault tolerance