Modular Multilevel Converter

Introduction of a low level communication bus for distributed control

Master thesis (2018)

Authors

O.C. Keel Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science

Contributors

Jan Abraham Ferreira (supervisor 1)
R.A.C.M.M. van Swaaij (supervisor 2)
Z. Qin (supervisor 2)
Mladen Gagic (coach)
Faculty
Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science
Copyright: © 2018 Oliver Keel
Communication Modular multilevel converter Drivetrain
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Published Date

02-07-2018

Language

English

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Faculty

Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science

Abstract

The transportation industry is causing 14% of the worldwide greenhouse gas emission. Therefore, the United Nation concluded with the Paris climate agreement to reduce and limit their emissions to keep the global average temperature increase below 2 degrees Celsius. Based on the agreement the European union introduced new regulations to limit the average fleet emission of car companies. In this push towards lowering emission the companies introduced their first generations of electric cars. To further improve the efficiency of the electric drive train new multilevel topologies were introduced. One of the topologies is called modular multilevel converter (MMC) introduced by R. Marquardt and A. Llesnicar in 2003. This new topology main advantage are its modularity and the option to use low voltage component. However, no company industrialized the MMC for drive train application. The reason therefore are the extensive control architecture, hardware and software wise. This thesis investigated possible ways to reduce the wiring and complexity by introducing a low level communication bus together with distributing the control to remove the centralized architecture. Therefore, the different possible low level communication bus were analysed and compared. The different bus protocols were compared based on speed and time to send the same amount of information to control a MMC. It was concluded that the serial peripheral interface bus (SPI) shows the highest capability for the proposed single phase 5 level converter set-up. Therefore, an experimental system was built to validate the performance. The system itself was designed with the goal to use low cost and low voltage component. The validation of the experimental set-up showed the stable operation of the system with an open loop control. Thereby it proofs the possibility to integrate and control the MMC with a low level communication bus. The results can be used as a baseline to further research on integrating theMMC and make it viable for drive train applications.