Investigation of switching schemes for three-phase four-leg voltage source inverters

Abstract

Three-phase four-leg voltage source inverters (VSIs) are widely used in distributed power generation applications, three-phase UPS systems and fault-mode operation of a balanced three-phase system where the balanced three-phase voltage output is required when the loads are unbalanced. A three-dimensional space vector modulation (3-D SVM) switching scheme, which is proved to be compatible with modern DSP implementation for a four-leg VSI, has the advantage of higher DC link utilization, less harmonic contents and less switching losses compared with sinusoidal PWM. Therefore it is the first choice of switching schemes for a four-leg inverter. Electromagnetic interference (EMI) which is associated with common-mode switching for a high voltage level power system can degrade the equipment performance and cause communication problems. The conventional 3-D SVM switching scheme exhibits high common-mode voltage (CMV) characteristics which may result in problems in high power applications. The 3-D SVM has the drawback of being complex which could become a software burden in computationally intense real-time control applications. Attempts to reduce the complexity of the 3-D SVM have been made by many researchers and new switching schemes such as carrier-based PWM proved to have the same performance. This thesis presents a switching scheme called near-state 3-D SVM that can reduce the CMV voltage level of a four-leg inverter by avoiding the use of the two zero switching states of the inverter. A laboratory test bench has been built to validate the proposed switching scheme. An in-depth analysis has been carried out for a four-leg inverter in terms of total harmonic distortion (THD) factor, current harmonic distortion factor, conduction losses and switching losses. The proposed switching scheme is analyzed and compared with the conventional 3-D SVM using the analysis method. Additionally, a simplified switching scheme which is still based on space vector theory is proposed. This simplified switching scheme remains compatible with vector control. Experimental results show that the simplified switching scheme has the same performance as 3-D SVM, with reduced program execution time. An output voltage control loop with current feed-forward term in d-q-0 coordinate, which is designed in the discrete-time domain, proves to be most compatible with a DSP-based control system. Experimental results demonstrate the performance of the control loop in both steady state and transient operation.