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A novel single-phase pulsewidth modulation (PWM) direct ac–ac converter based on two-level nondifferential dual-buck ac chopper legs with inverting and noninverting operations is first proposed in this article. It has the ability to resolve both voltage sag and swell problems at the same time when used as distributed flexible voltage conditioner. Compared to the traditional ac–ac converter, it has much enhanced system reliability thanks to no shoot-through problems even when all switches of each ac chopper legs are turned on, and therefore, the PWM dead time is not needed leading to improve the utilization of the duty cycles. Only half of the switches in the proposed converter is switched at high frequency during a switching period at most, which significantly reduces the total switching loss. In particularly, the converter has two greatest advantages that it retains the common sharing ground of the input and output and has the same buck/boost operation process for noninverting and inverting modes. In order to fully testify the performance of the proposed converter, a 500-W experimental prototype is built and tested at different conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, a novel bidirectional dc–dc converter (BDC) consisting of an active switched-inductor (A-SL) cell, a zero current ripple cell and an auxiliary capacitor cell is proposed for the battery energy storage system. The proposed BDC integrates with the advantages of high voltage conversion ratio, low power switch voltage stresses, zero ripple current on the low voltage side (LVS), and constant potential difference between the grounds of LVS and high voltage side. Thanks to the use of synchronous rectification technology, the efficiency of the proposed BDC is increased. The operating principles, the characteristics analysis and the parameter design of the proposed BDC are given. In addition, to show the merits of the proposed BDC, a comparison study involves the proposed converter and other BDCs is demonstrated. Finally, some experimental results obtained using a 1000 W prototype are presented to valid the effectiveness of the proposed BDC. 96.43% and 96.67% maximum conversion efficiencies can be achieved in the step-up and step-down modes, respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In hybrid ac/dc microgrids, a bus converter system involving the use of a high-frequency dc transformer (DCT) plays a vital role to transmit power between dc and ac subgrids. However, the multiple control tasks and power transfer mode switching of bidirectional dc/ac converter create big challenges for the systematic controller design of DCT. To address this concern, a comprehensive coordinated frequency control (CCFC) is put forward in this article for the symmetrical CLLC-DCT to adapt the complicated hybrid ac/dc microgrid operation. By establishing the mathematical model on the voltage conversion gain (VCG) and active power transmission ratio (APTR), four operation modes are proposed based on power transfer conditions. The corresponding operators are derived based on the circuit feature to avoid the redundant manipulations. Frequency threshold is determined to avoid both overvoltage and low-voltage issues based on the known allowable range of VCG. The proposed CCFC scheme is detailedly realized by combining both the open-loop and closed-loop schemes to facilitate the design procedure. The prototype DCT demonstrates the proposed CCFC scheme can achieve a peak efficiency of 98.2% and satisfied performances on both VCG and APTR. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper introduces a novel H-bridge structured ac–ac pulsewidth modulation (PWM) converter topology based on two-level non-differential ac chopper legs, which can work at the non-inverting and inverting modes for the utility voltage compensation. Compared to the traditional bipolar-type H-bridge ac–ac converter, no bidirectional switches are switched in a complementary manner to overcome the commutation problem due to the delayed response of electronic circuits and semiconductor switching devices. The detailed PWM control signals and operational principles are presented to regulate the output voltage in a bipolar manner. Especially the main advantage is that the proposed ac–ac converter has the same buck/boost operation process for non-inverting and inverting modes, which ensures the continuously average current supply to the low-voltage output side without a high-value capacitor to support power. Additionally, due to the common sharing ground of the input and output, the feature that output can reverse or maintain phase angle with input is supported well. Then, the detailed analysis, design conditions, and experimental verification based on a 1 kW experimental prototype are presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The traditional finite-control-set model predictive control (FCS-MPC) method for a cascaded H-bridge (CHB) rectifier has two main issues: heavy computational burden and low steady-state current performance. In this paper, a novel FCS-MPC method has been proposed for a single-phase CHB rectifier. The proposed method solves the optimization problem of FCS-MPC for one cell by one cell, like a “pipeline.” In the proposed method, the sampling period is divided into equal intervals by the number of cells. At the beginning of the first interval, the first cell selects its switching state to be applied. Then, the following cell selects its switching state to be applied at the beginning of next interval. Finally, the selected switching state of last cell will be applied at the beginning of the last interval. A cost function presenting the control objectives of common source current error and itself dc-link voltage error is evaluated for each cell. A single-phase three-cell CHB rectifier controlled by a DSpace DS1104 is tested and the experimental results show that a significant reduction in computational time, an improved steady-state current performance, and a comparable dynamic response are achieved in the proposed method in comparison with the traditional FCS-MPC method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]