IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER DELIVERY, VOL. 26, NO.

3, JULY 2011 2009

Reduced Switching-Frequency Modulation and

Circulating Current Suppression for Modular
Multilevel Converters
Qingrui Tu, Student Member, IEEE, Zheng Xu, Member, IEEE, and Lie Xu, Senior Member, IEEE

Abstract—This paper describes a modified phase-shifted

carrier-based pulsewidth-modulation (PSC-PWM) scheme for
modular multilevel converters (MMC). In order to reduce the av-
erage device switching frequency, a reduced switching-frequency
(RSF) voltage balancing algorithm is developed. This paper also
proposes a circulating current suppressing controller (CCSC)
to minimize the inner circulating current in an MMC. Based on
the double line-frequency, negative-sequence rotational frame,
the three-phase alternative circulating currents are decomposed
into two dc components and are minimized by a pair of propor-
tional integral controllers. Simulation results based on a detailed
PSCAD/EMTDC model prove the effectiveness of the modified
PSC-PWM method and the RSF voltage-balancing algorithm.
The proposed CCSC not only eliminates the inner circulating
current but also improves the quality of the converter ac output
voltage. A simple loss evaluation demonstrates that the RSF
voltage-balancing algorithm and the CCSC reduce the converter
power losses. Fig. 1. Basic structure of MMC.
Index Terms—Circulating current, modular multilevel converter
(MMC), negative sequence, phase-shifted carrier, pulsewidth mod-
ulation. tions, because it is convenient to provide the two common dc
buses in dc-link power transmission. In comparison, the CHB
topology could not provide the two common dc-link terminals
I. INTRODUCTION
for ac/dc power conversion [5].

M ODULAR multilevel converter (MMC) has be-

come a highly attractive topology for medium- and
high-voltage applications. A basic structure of a three-phase
MMC is shown in Fig. 1. Due to the modular structure with
several cascaded submodules (SM), series connection of
power–electronic devices is avoided. Thus, the power devices
in one converter arm need not be switched on or off at the same
time. As a result, the stresses on the devices are significantly
reduced. Furthermore, the low switching frequency of the
semiconductors leads to low converter losses in MMC [1]–[3].
Compared with the star-configured cascaded H-bridge (CHB)
topology in STATCOM applications [4], the amount of the ca-
pacitors is doubled in MMC, since it uses the half H-bridge sub-
modules. However, MMC is much suitable for HVDC applica-
Manuscript received November 17, 2010; revised January 26, 2011; accepted
February 08, 2011. Date of publication April 05, 2011; date of current version
June 24, 2011. Paper no. TPWRD-00884-2010.
Q. Tu and Z. Xu are with the Department of Electrical Engineering, Zhe-
jiang University, Hangzhou 310027, China (e-mail: qingrui.tu@gmail.com;
hvdc@zju.edu.cn).
L. Xu is with the School of Electronics, Electrical Engineering and Com-
puter Science, Queen’s University of Belfast, Belfast BT9 5AH, U.K. (e-mail:
l.xu@ee.qub.ac.uk).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TPWRD.2011.2115258
0885-8977/$26.00 © 2011 IEEE
Modular multilevel converter was first introduced in [6].
Basic concepts and operation principles of MMC were studied
in [7]–[10]. Reference [5] applied the PWM scheme to MMC
with averaging and balancing controls and the results were
verified by simulations and experiments. The performances
of the converter with different multicarrier pulsewidth-mod-
ulation (PWM) techniques were evaluated in [11] whereas a
new PWM modulation scheme was proposed and the losses
of the semiconductors were analyzed [12]. An optimal current
control strategy considering the actuator and sensor delays
was investigated [13]. A linear time-varying model [14] and
a simplified model [15] have been developed to study the
steady-state and dynamic behavior of MMC. Reference [16]
discussed a continuous model of the MMC and focused on the
inner energy control of the converter. The system dynamics of
a back-to-back MMC-HVDC under balanced and unbalanced
conditions are investigated in [17]. An efficient modeling
method of MMC for electromagnetic transient simulations is
proposed in [18].
Voltage balancing among the SM capacitors is one of the
main problems in MMC. The voltage-balancing algorithm, by
sorting the capacitors’ voltages, is proposed in [9], [12]. The
SMs with the lowest or highest capacitor voltages are selected
and triggered according to the direction of the arm current. How-
2010 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER DELIVERY, VOL. 26, NO. 3, JULY 2011

ever, to achieve voltage balance among the SMs in the same arm,
the proposed balancing algorithm needs to be executed in each
control cycle. Thus, even if the total number of onstate SMs in
one arm were not changed, some unnecessary switching opera-
tions would still have to be performed. This leads to relatively
high switching frequency and high switching losses.
As a result of the SM capacitor voltage variation, the three
parallel connected phase units shown in Fig. 1 may have dif-
ferent voltages. Consequently, this leads to circulating currents
among the three phase units. The circulating currents flow
through the six arms and distort the sinusoidal arm current.
Thus, the rms value of the arm current and the converter losses
increase [16]. The problem of circulating currents with different Fig. 2. Single-phase equivalent circuit of the MMC.
load phase angles was investigated [19]. References [20] and
[21] analyzed the mechanism of the three-phase circulating
currents in MMC and discussed the relationship between the B. Operation Principle
amplitudes of the circulating currents and the parameters of the Fig. 2 shows the single-phase equivalent circuit of the MMC.
arm inductors. Although increasing the arm inductance reduces and are the arm inductance and equivalent arm resistance,
the circulating currents, it is not able to completely eliminate respectively. and are the total dc bus voltage and dc
the circulating currents and is not cost-effective due to the current, respectively. is the converter output
large voltage drop and high cost of high-voltage inductors. An voltage of phase at point V whereas is the
effective control method to eliminate the circulating currents corresponding line current. The arm voltages generated by the
was proposed in [16] and [21]. However, the extra control com- cascaded SMs are expressed as and where the subscripts
ponent required must be precisely in phase with the generated and denote the upper (positive) and lower (negative) arms,
converter electromotive force (EMF). In addition, an accurate respectively. According to Fig. 2 and [16], the corresponding
impedance angle of the converter arm must be measured and arm currents and can be expressed as
compensated. These requirements make it difficult to imple-
ment in real systems.
This paper addresses the aforementioned two main issues (1)
of MMC (i.e., the switching frequency reduction in voltage
balancing and the circulating current elimination). A reduced (2)
switching-frequency (RSF) voltage-balancing algorithm is
presented. This RSF voltage balancing algorithm reduces the where is the inner difference current of phase , which
average device switching frequency and, at the same time, flows through both the upper and lower arms and is given as
distributes the energy equally among the SM capacitors. This
paper also presents a new circulating current suppressing con-
(3)
troller (CCSC) for MMC based on the double line-frequency,
negative-sequence rotational coordinate. This CCSC can
significantly reduce the amplitudes of the circulating currents According to [16], the MMC can be characterized by the fol-
without affecting the output voltages and currents of the MMC lowing equations:
at the ac side.

II. BASIC STRUCTURE AND OPERATION PRINCIPLE OF THE

(4)
MODULAR MULTILEVEL CONVERTER

A. Basic Structure (5)

As shown in Fig. 1, a three-phase MMC consists of six arms,
each having a total of submodules and one inductor . Two where in (4) is the inner emf generated in phase and is
arms in the same leg comprise a phase unit. expressed as
A single SM structure is shown on the right in Fig. 1. The SM
output voltage has two values (i.e., when the
upper insulated-gate bipolar transistor (IGBT) is switched (6)
on and the lower one is switched off, and 0 when
the lower IGBT is switched on and the upper one is switched According to (4), when is regarded as the ac network
off. This means each SM has two states in normal operations: voltage, the current can be controlled directly by regulating
switched on or switched off 0). the control variable . Thus, the widely used current vector
TU et al.: REDUCED SWITCHING-FREQUENCY MODULATION AND CIRCULATING CURRENT SUPPRESSION
Fig. 3. Entire modulation and balancing control schemes.
control scheme based on coordinates [22]–[24] can also be
adopted in MMC and no further discussion is given here. The
inner dynamic performance of the MMC is characterized by (5)
and it is redefined as
(7)
where is the inner unbalance voltage of phase .
According to (7), the difference current can be controlled
by regulating the unbalance voltage . Considering (6) and
(7), the arm voltage references are given as
(8)
(9)
As the same voltage is subtracted from and
, according to (4) and (6), the resulting will not
change and, thus, the ac-side dynamics are not affected. As
previously described, the is obtained from the outer system
control loops whereas the inner unbalance voltage is used
to control the MMC inner dynamic performance including the
three-phase inner circulating currents.
III. MODULATION SCHEME AND VOLTAGE BALANCING
The phase-shifted carrier-based PWM (PSC-PWM) method
can automatically suppress all low-order harmonics for multi-
level converters [25]. However, in the conventional PSC-PWM
method, each carrier corresponds to the switching mode of a
single SM. Since the characteristics of each SM are different,
the problem of dynamic voltage balancing among the SM dc
capacitors arises.
To tackle this problem, a modified phase-shifted carrier-based
PWM method with an RSF voltage-balancing algorithm is pro-
posed. Fig. 3 shows the schematic diagram of the modulation
and balancing control. As shown, there are two control frequen-
cies (i.e. one is the carrier-wave frequency , and the other is
the sampling and control frequency , which also corresponds
to the frequency for updating the IGBT switching states in
order to maintain dc voltage balance. The actual average device
switching frequency will normally be much lower than as
the devices’ switching states do not always change during each
control cycle in the proposed RSF voltage-balancing algorithm.
A. Modified PSC-PWM Method
The details of the modified PSC-PWM method are shown in
Fig. 4. For an MMC with number of SMs per arm, the refer-
ence arm voltages are compared with triangular carriers, each
2011
Fig. 4. Modified PSC-PWM method.
phase shifted by an angle of 360 . is the total number
of SMs that need to be switched on in one arm. In each control
cycle, is calculated and used as the output of the modulator
as shown in Fig. 3. However, the specific SMs to be turned on
are not determined at this stage.
B. Reduced Switching-Frequency Voltage Balancing
The selection of the SMs is performed based on the RSF
voltage-balancing algorithm. This balancing algorithm is imple-
mented in each converter arm and the gate signals are updated at
the sampling control frequency . The generation of switching
pulses is based on real-time monitoring of the voltages of each
SM capacitor , and the direction of the
arm current or . In order to select the proper
SM with the highest or lowest voltage, all of the SM voltages in
one arm have to be sorted.
The basic principles of the RSF voltage-balancing algorithm
are derived from the conventional balancing algorithm proposed
in [9] and [12] as follows.
• When the arm current charges the capacitors, it switches on
the SMs with the lowest capacitor voltages while switching
off those with the highest voltages.
• When the arm current discharges the capacitors, the SMs
with the highest capacitor voltages are switched on while
those with the lowest voltages are switched off.
The main problem associated with the aforementioned
method is the resulting high switching frequency as the
balancing algorithm switches the SMs according to their re-
spective capacitor voltages at every control period. To solve
this problem, [26] proposed a new balancing method to reduce
the switching frequency. However, there is a voltage band to
be set, and the value of the band is difficult to choose. In this
paper, the balancing method is modified, and we found that the
voltage band is not necessary. The modified RSF voltage-bal-
ancing method is shown in Fig. 5. is the number of
SMs that are already in the on-state in the current control cycle,
whereas is the newly calculated number. is the extra
number of SMs that need to be switched on in the following
control cycle. is the corresponding arm current ( or ,
). Its positive direction is shown in Fig. 2 referring
to charge the capacitors.
The switching principles of the RSF voltage-balancing algo-
rithm are thus summarized as follows.
• If extra SMs need to be switched on during the following
control cycle (i.e. is positive), no switching is ap-
2012 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER DELIVERY, VOL. 26, NO. 3, JULY 2011

Fig. 6. Transfer function of the circulating currents.

Fig. 5. Reduced switching-frequency (RSF) voltage-balancing algorithm. (12)

where is the total dc current shown in Fig. 2. is the peak

plied to those SMs currently in the on-state. The conven- value of the double line-frequency circulating current. is the
tional balancing algorithm mentioned before will only be fundamental frequency and is the initial phase angle.
applied to those SMs currently in the off-state. According to (10)–(12), the three-phase circulating currents
• If some SMs that are currently in the on-state need to be can be transformed into two dc components in the double line-
switched off during the following control cycle (i.e. frequency, negative-sequence rotational reference frame. The
is negative), no additional SMs that are currently in the transformation matrix is given as
off-state will be switched on. The conventional balancing
algorithm mentioned before will only be applied to the
SMs currently in the on-state. (13)
Compared to the conventional method, the proposed RSF where , The phase sequence of the transformation is
voltage balancing algorithm significantly reduces the average .
device switching frequency and the total switching losses of the Rewriting (7) in the sequence yields
converter.

(14)
IV. CIRCULATING CURRENT SUPPRESSING CONTROLLER

A. Circulating Current Model Substituting (10)–(12) into (14) and multiplying the transforma-
tion matrix yields
The circulating currents flow through the three-phase units of
the converter without affecting the ac-side voltages and currents.
It has been proved that the circulating currents in the MMC are
generated by the inner voltage differences among each phase
unit [19]–[21], and they are in the form of negative sequence (15)
with the frequency being twice the fundamental one [21]. These
second harmonic currents increase the rms values of the arm where and denote the components of the inner
currents and, thus, result in higher converter power losses [16]. unbalance voltage in double line-frequency, negative-
The circulating current in each phase is superimposed on to a dc sequence rotational reference frame. and are the
current component that provides the actual dc/ac power transfer components of the circulating current and are given as
[21]. As a result, the inner difference current defined in (3) , . By using (15), the
consists of two parts (i.e., a dc part that is equal to one-third of three-phase time-varying ac circulating currents become two dc
the total dc current and an ac part corresponding to the components. According to (15), the transfer function from the
circulating current). The expressions of the three-phase inner inner unbalance voltages to the circulating currents is depicted
difference currents are given as follows: in Fig. 6.

B. Suppressing Controller Design

(10)
Based on the mathematical model of the circulating current in
(15) and Fig. 6, the structure of the proposed circulating current
suppressing controller (CCSC) is shown in Fig. 7. According
to (3), the inner difference current for each phase is cal-
(11)
culated by adding together the respective upper and lower arm
TU et al.: REDUCED SWITCHING-FREQUENCY MODULATION AND CIRCULATING CURRENT SUPPRESSION
Fig. 7. Circulating current suppressing controller.
Fig. 8. Control structure of the MMC including CCSC.
Fig. 9. System structure of simulations.
currents (i.e., and ). They are then transformed to the
double line-frequency, negative-sequence rotational frame (i.e.,
and ). With both the reference values of and
set at zero to minimize the circulating currents, the
control signals and are obtained using PI
controllers with cross coupling compensation. Finally, the three
reference values of the inner unbalance voltage
are calculated by the inverse transformation . modulations and voltage-balancing schemes. Fig. 11(a) shows
The overall control structure of the MMC including the pro-
posed CCSC is shown in Fig. 8. The outer power and inner cur-
rent controllers are standard systems which generate the refer-
ence of inner emf described in (4) and (6). The upper and
lower arm voltage references and are obtained
according to (8) and (9). The modified PSC-PWM technology
proposed in Section III is used to generate the gate signals of
the SMs.
V. PSCAD/EMTDC SIMULATION RESULTS
To verify the modified PSC-PWM method and the proposed
CCSC, a detailed model based on the time-domain simulation
tool PSCAD/EMTDC was developed. Fig. 9 shows the struc-
ture of the simulated system where the MMC shown in Fig. 1 is
implemented. The main circuit parameters and operating condi-
tions are listed in Table I.
2013
TABLE I
MAIN CIRCUIT PARAMETERS AND OPERATING
CONDITIONS OF THE SIMULATED SYSTEM
A. Verification of the Modified PSC-PWM Method
The multilevel voltage waveform generated by the modi-
fied PSC-PWM method is shown in Fig. 10. The blue line in
Fig. 10(a) is the reference arm voltage generated by the con-
troller. Fig. 10(b) shows the actual multilevel voltage waveform
of the upper arm in phase . Fig. 10(c) is the line-to-line output
voltage of the converter . Fig. 10(d) is the spectrum of
. It can be seen that the dominant harmonics are centered
at the frequency of 20 250 5000 Hz.
To verify the modified PSC-PWM method with the RSF
voltage-balancing algorithm, the 20 SM capacitors’ voltages
in the upper arm of phase are compared under different
that the 20 SMs’ voltages become unstable in the conven-
tional PSC-PWM method without voltage-balancing control.
Fig. 11(b) uses the modified PSC-PWM method with the
conventional voltage-balancing algorithm proposed in [9] and
[12] whereas Fig. 11(c) shows the capacitor voltages using the
proposed RSF algorithm. As can be seen, the capacitor voltages
of both schemes are stable in Fig. 11(b) and (c).
From the enlarged pictures in Fig. 11, it is shown that the
balancing of the 20 SMs’ voltages is the best in Fig. 11(b),
but the average device switching frequency is also the
highest (about 1047 Hz). For comparison, the in the
RSF voltage balancing algorithm is much lower [151 Hz in
Fig. 11(c)] and the capacitor voltages are also well balanced.
Fig. 12(a)–(c) compare the gate signals for one of the phase
upper arm SMs under the three different modulation and bal-
ancing schemes shown in Fig. 11. The switching signals for
2014 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER DELIVERY, VOL. 26, NO. 3, JULY 2011

Fig. 10. Modified PSC-PWM method. (a) Reference voltage of the upper arm
in phase a generated by the controller (u = U =2 = 10 kV). (b) Multi-
level voltage waveform generated by the upper arm in phase a. (c) Line-to-line
output voltage at point V. (d) Spectrum of the line-to-line output voltage at point
V (f = 50 Hz). Fig. 11. Comparisons of the SM capacitor voltages with different modulation
schemes. (a) Conventional PSC-PWM. (b) Modified PSC-PWM with conven-
tional voltage balancing. (c) Modified PSC-PWM with RSF voltage balancing.

other SMs are similar and are not shown here. The difference
in average switching frequencies can be clearly seen in Fig. 12.
It has been concluded that for a single SM, the switching
frequency is variable in the modified PSC-PWM method
[Fig. 12(b) and (c)]. However, the multilevel arm voltage
waveform [Fig. 10(b), sum of the 20 SMs] and the line-to-line
output voltage [Fig. 10(c)] in the modified PSC-PWM method
are the same with the one in conventional PSC-PWM. It is
demonstrated by the harmonic spectrum of the output voltage
[Fig. 10(d)] that the lowest dominant harmonics are centered
around times of the carrier frequency . So it is easy for
the design of filters.

B. Verification of the CCSC

Simulated waveforms to verify the proposed circulating cur-
rent suppressing controller are depicted in Fig. 13. The CCSC
was initially disabled but re-enabled at 0.3 s. Fig. 13(a) is the
inner difference current in phase , which consists of a dc cur-
Fig. 12. Gate signals of one power device with different modulation schemes.
rent and a circulating current at double line-frequency. As can be (a) Conventional PSC-PWM. (b) Modified PSC-PWM with conventional
seen, the peak-to-peak value of the circulating current is around voltage balancing. (c) Modified PSC-PWM with RSF voltage balancing.
0.6 kA without the CCSC and is reduced to 0.02 kA after the
CCSC being enabled. Fig. 13(b) shows the upper arm current
of phase . It can be seen that with the use of the CCSC, the ratios between the circulating and the fundamental components
waveform becomes sinusoidal and the distortion is mitigated. in the arm current without and with CCSC are 35% and 1%, re-
Note that the dc component in the arm current is necessary and spectively. Fig. 13(c) is the capacitor voltages of the 20 SMs
represents the transmission of active power between the ac and in the upper arm of phase . It is clear that a significant re-
dc sides. From Fig. 13(a) and (b), it can be calculated that the duction (about 25%) of the voltage fluctuation is achieved by
TU et al.: REDUCED SWITCHING-FREQUENCY MODULATION AND CIRCULATING CURRENT SUPPRESSION
Fig. 13. Simulated waveforms of the MMC using CCSC. (a) Difference current
of phase a. (b) Upper arm current of phase a. (c) Voltages of 20 SM capacitors
in the upper arm of phase a. (d) AC line-to-line voltage at point V. (e) AC line
current at point V.
the proposed CCSC. The line-to-line voltage and current at the
ac point V is shown in Fig. 13(d) and (e), respectively. No no-
ticeable changes to the ac-side quantities can be observed. This
demonstrates that the CCSC does not have any adverse effect
on the outer dynamic performances of the MMC.
Further harmonic analysis also shows a modest reduction of
the output ac voltage total harmonic distortion (THD) with the
use of the CCSC. Without CCSC, the voltage THD is 4.5%
and this is reduced to 3.7% with CCSC. This can be explained
by considering the reductions of the SMs’ voltage fluctuations
shown in Fig. 13(c), which result in a better formation of the
output ac voltages. From this point of view, the CCSC improves
not only the inner dynamic performances, but also the quality
of the converter output voltage.
C. Responses During Power Reversal
Fig. 14 shows the system behavior during active power re-
versal. The CCSC is enabled at 0.1 s. The active power refer-
ence steps from 1.0 to 1.0 pu at 0.3 s while the reactive
power reference steps from 0.33 p.u. to 0 at the same time.
As can be seen, the circulating current [Fig. 14(b)] is suppressed
well during the transients and, in the meantime, the capacitors’
voltages [Fig. 14(d)] are also balanced.
2015
Fig. 14. System behavior during power reversal. (a) Active and reactive power
at the ac terminal. (b) Difference current of phase a. (c) Upper arm current of
phase a. (d) 20 SM capacitors in the upper arm of phase a. (e) Line-to-line
voltage at point V. (f) Line current at point V.
D. Loss Evaluation
A simple losses evaluation is investigated based on the
method used in [12]. The parameters of the IGBT modules are
derived from the datasheet of the 5SNA 1200E250100 from
ABB [27], [28]. The junction temperature is considered to
be 125 and the current factor 1 for simplification. The
mean loss distribution in one SM is shown in Fig. 15.
is the conduction losses of the IGBT or the diode. is the
switching losses of the IGBT, which contains the turn-on and
turn-off losses. denotes the reverse-recovery losses of the
diode. is the total losses of one SM.
It is shown that the loss distribution of the four parts in one
SM (Fig. 1) is unequal. At the condition of 20 MW,
6.6 MVar, the losses of the upper IGBT and the lower diode
are much higher than the other two parts ( and ). This
is due to the fact that the direction of the dc component in the
arm current is negative [Fig. 13(b)].
Compared with the conventional voltage-balancing algo-
rithm, the total power loss with the RSF method decreases
from 3099 to 1466 W. The reduction is mainly attributed to the
decreases of IGBT switching losses and diode reverse-recovery
losses.
2016
Fig. 15. Mean loss distribution of the IGBT and diode parts in the upper arm
of phase a (the 1st SM). (a) Conventional voltage-balancing algorithm. (b) RSF
voltage balancing. (c) RSF voltage balancing and CCSC (P = 20 MW, Q
6.6 MVar, junction temperature T= =
125 , current factor  1).
The use of the CCSC also reduces the power losses
[Fig. 15(c)] due to the improvement of the arm current
waveforms. The total losses of one SM decreased from 1466 to
1359 W due to the reduction of conduction losses of and .
VI. CONCLUSION
In this paper, a modified phase-shifted carrier-based PWM
(PSC-PWM) method is proposed for the operation of MMC.
Since the conventional voltage-balancing algorithm leads
to high average device switching frequency, a reduced
switching-frequency (RSF) voltage-balancing algorithm is
introduced. Simulation results show that by combining the
modified PSC-PWM and the RSF voltage-balancing algorithm,
good capacitor voltage balancing can be achieved with reduced
average device switching frequency and reduced switching
losses.
The inner dynamics of the MMC have been analyzed, and
the transfer functions from the phase unit inner unbalance volt-
ages to the circulating currents are investigated. A CCSC is de-
signed based on the negative-sequence, double line-frequency
transformation. Simulation results demonstrated the effec-
tiveness of the CCSC for minimizing the circulating current. It
has also been shown that the reduction of the circulating current
improves not only the inner dynamic performances, but also the
quality of the converter output voltage due to the decrease of the
capacitor voltage variation.
APPENDIX
The parameter of the capacitor is determined by [20]
(16)
where is the apparent power of the converter,
is the voltage modulation index, is the number of SMs per
arm, is the fundamental frequency, is the voltage ripper of
the capacitor, is the mean value of the capacitor voltage, and
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER DELIVERY, VOL. 26, NO. 3, JULY 2011
is the power factor. For example, 20 MW.
0.95, 0.7, 20, 314 rad/s, 5%, 1 kV.
Then, we obtain 26000 F.
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[24] L. Xu, B. R. Andersen, and P. Cartwright, “VSC transmission operating Zheng Xu (M’00) was born in Zhejiang, China,
under unbalanced AC conditions-analysis and control design,” IEEE in September 1962. He received the B.S., M.S.,
Trans. Power Del., vol. 20, no. 1, pp. 427–434, Jan. 2005. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from
[25] L. Xu and V. G. Agelidis, “VSC transmission system using flying ca- Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China, in 1983,
pacitor multilevel converters and hybrid PWM control,” IEEE Trans. 1986, and 1993, respectively.
Power Del., vol. 22, no. 1, pp. 693–702, Jan. 2007. He has been with the Department of Electrical En-
[26] M. Dommaschk, “Drive for a phase module branch of a multilevel con- gineering, Zhejiang University, since 1986 and has
verter,” Int. Patent WO2008/086760A1, Jul. 24, 2008. been a Professor there since 1998. His research areas
[27] B. Backlund, R. Schnell, U. Schlapbach, and R. Fischer, Application include HVDC, flexible ac transmission systems,
note: Applying IGBTs. Apr. 2009. [Online]. Available: http://www. power harmonics, and power quality.
abb.com
[28] B. Backlund, R. Schnell, U. Schlapbach, and R. Fischer, Data sheet:
IGBT module 5SNA 1200E250100. Jul. 2004. [Online]. Available:
http://www.abb.com
Lie Xu (M’03–SM’06) received the B.Sc. degree
from Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China, in
1993, and the Ph.D. degree from the University of
Qingrui Tu (S’10) was born in Gansu, China, in Sheffield, Sheffield, U.K., in 1999.
November 1985. He received the B.S. degree in Currently, he is a Senior Lecturer in the School
electrical engineering from Zhejiang University, of Electronics, Electrical Engineering and Computer
Hangzhou, China, in 2008, where he is currently Science, Queen’s University of Belfast, Belfast, U.K.
pursuing the Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering. He was with the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow,
His main interests include the application of VSC- U.K., from 2007 to 2008. His current research inter-
HVDC and flexible ac transmission systems for re- ests include power electronics, wind energy genera-
newable energy. tion and grid integration, and the application of power
electronics to power systems.