A clamping circuit based voltage measurement system for high frequency flying capacitor multilevel inverters
File(s)FINAL VERSION.pdf (3.59 MB)
Accepted version
Author(s)
Kampitsis, Georgios
Batzelis, Efstratios
Mitcheson, Paul D
Pal, Bikash C
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
In an era where high-frequency flying capacitor (FC) multilevel inverters (MLI) are increasingly gaining attention in energy conversion systems that push the boundaries of power density, the need for a compact, fast, and accurate FC voltage monitoring is also increasing. In this paper we designed and developed a new FC measurement system, based on precise sampling of the inverter switching node voltage, through a bidirectional clamping circuit. The deviation of FC voltages from their nominal values are extracted by solving a set of linear equations. With a single sensor per phase and no isolation requirements, as opposed to dozens of sensors in traditional FC monitoring, our approach results in significantly lower cost, complexity, and circuit-size. Detailed device-level simulations in LTspice and system-scale simulations in Matlab, validate the accuracy and speed of the proposed measurement system and the balancing strategy in steady state, abrupt load change and imbalance conditions. Experiments carried out in a 3-phase Gallium-Nitride 5-level inverter prototype, reveal a gain in precision and bandwidth that is more than 30 times that of conventional methods, at a fraction of their cost and footprint. The recorded performance renders the developed sensor an ideal solution for fast MLIs based on wide-bandgap technology
Date Issued
2022-05-19
Date Acceptance
2022-05-01
Citation
IEEE Transactions on Power Electronics, 2022, 37 (10), pp.1-1
ISSN
0885-8993
Publisher
Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE)
Start Page
1
End Page
1
Journal / Book Title
IEEE Transactions on Power Electronics
Volume
37
Issue
10
Copyright Statement
© 2022 The Author(s). This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License. For more information, see https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
License URL
Sponsor
European Commission
Identifier
https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9772421
Subjects
Electrical & Electronic Engineering
0906 Electrical and Electronic Engineering
Publication Status
Published