DC-BUS VOLTAGE CONTROL OF THREE-PHASE AC/DC CONVERTER USING LOAD PREDICTIVE METHOD

ABSTRACT
A three-phase AC/DC converter should extract the pure sinusoidal current from the AC source, and maintain the DC-bus voltage at a demand level when the dc load varies. In this paper, a novel control method is presented to match these requirements. At the AC side, a real-time voltage and current predictive methods are used to reduce the influence of control delay and voltage harmonics, so that AC current quality can be maintained at a very high level. At the DCbus side, a predictive load and DC voltage are used to decide the converter output DC current control. Based on load correct prediction, when the DC load varies, its influence on the DC voltage is reduced to the minimum.

INTRODUCTION
MAINS voltage dips and short interruptions are generated by a wide variety of phenomena. They can be caused by nearby events, such as a faulty load on an adjacent branch circuit having a circuit breaker tripped, or by a large motor or heater on the same circuit being switched on. They can also be due to far away events such as lightning storms or a downed power line. In the case of a fault in the power distribution grid, an automatic circuit reclosure may open and close the circuit several times within a short period attempting to clear the fault, resulting in a sequence of short interruptions for by downstream loads. In any case, the voltage changes produced can affect the operation of or even damage nearby electrical drives. Therefore, immunity for these types of events should be envisaged to ensure safe and reliable operation. A dip on all three phases leads to an instantaneous decrease of the DC-link voltage, whereas a one-phase dip may allow continued operating of the drive system, albeit at higher rectifier stress Rectifier bridges must be properly designed to withstand the high peak currents. Due to advances in semiconductor technology, modern electric drives can withstand the high peak currents occurring when the power supply is restored after a short disturbance. Furthermore, powerful digital signal processing enables drive manufacturers to implement regenerative braking schemes allowing the inverter to keep its DC-link voltage at a minimum level. The availability of electrical power from the public supply as a function of the down time at interruptions is given in [1] indicating that a power interruption of more than 10 ms duration is likely to occur every 200 hours, on average. The mean time between long time power interruptions is of the order of several 10000 hours. Short time interruptions of the power supply are therefore the most frequent cause for inverter failure. When a power interruption occurs, the dc-link energy is absorbed by the motor within a few milliseconds. Since the electronic control system loses power as well, the inverter shuts down by an under-voltage protection scheme in order to avoid damage to the electronic equipment. Generally, it is

required to wait until the machine has come to a complete standstill to enable restarting [2]. Braking to zero speed and restarting is obviously not an adequate solution. Many continuous production processes in industry are sensitive to larger variation in speed or losing control. Especially in multimotor drives, a loss of mutual synchronization may have serious consequences. This may entail damage or loss of material in critical applications as the production of textile fibers, paper, or with extruder drives. This paper discusses a design concept avoiding the standstill/restart interval at power interruptions by kinetic buffering, similar to a flywheel. When the supply of power is interrupted, a dc link voltage control is applied to force an immediate transition into generator mode. This maintains the dc link capacitor well charged and thus the electronic control circuits alive, since they are supplied by the dc link through a switched mode converter. In this way, the drive remains controllable even at power interruptions lasting several seconds.

The dc bus voltage can be controlled either by the speed of the otor requiring an additional speed control loop or directly by the electromagnetic torque affecting the motor speed change. The different control approaches are indicated by the switch in Fig. 1. Advantages and drawbacks of both control approaches are explained in the next section. Note, that the first approach turned out to malfunction, when tested under realistic and extreme conditions. The proposed control algorithm requires a fast torque control scheme. The well known principle of field orientation [3]-[4] is employed here. The high performance speed/torque control of the ac motor drive is described in [5]-[6]. The mechanical position sensor is replaced by an observer requiring no additional measurements. Only measurements of motor current and dc bus voltage are necessary. The entire system is controlled by a digital signal processor (DSP) based developing platform realizing dc bus voltage control, speed/torque control of the drive and start-up and shut down sequences. Both control and measurement units are supplied by the dc bus. A dc voltage beyond given limits leads inevitably to an undesired crash of the entire system. In particular, the power supply to the electronic control circuits of

the inverter must continue without interruption to maintain the system in operation.

II. DC BUS VOLTAGE CONTROL While the amount of energy stored in the dc link capacitor is normally insufficient to maintain the inverter active during a short power fail interval, the kinetic energy of the rotating masses of the motor and the driven plant is substantially higher. This reservoir can be tapped from for bridging the time interval of the power interruption. A fast change of the machine operation from motor to generator mode is then commanded. Energy is fed back from the rotating masses to the dc link circuit to maintain the dc voltage at a preset level. This is possible also in the presence of additional loads connected to the dc link. During a power interruption, the input power is smaller than the output power in the dc bus. The difference comes from the energy capacitor, being discharged. The dc bus collapses, if this condition sustains, resulting in a voltage drop beyond given limits. Hence, the inverter must slow down the rotating machine, in this case a permanent magnet synchronous machine (PMSM) to a new stable operating point. Due to the lack of a sufficiently large energy storage element (e.g. battery) in the dc bus, the energy of the rotating mass must be used immediately to generate the required power. Therefore, the voltage controller has to accelerate/brake the motor very quickly guaranteeing a balanced input/output power ratio at the dc bus. Fig. 2 shows the energy flow within the system neglecting losses

The energy of the regular grid is used to drive the motor/load system. Depending on the difference between power generation and energy consumption, the DC bus capacitor is charged or discharged according to: