Cumulative Fatigue Damage Balancing for Modular Multilevel Converter

Longjun Wang, Guoping Ou, Zhenwei Zhou, Gang Wang, Pengfei Yu and Zheng Zhang
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Longjun Wang: School of Electric Power Engineering, South China University of Technology, Guangzhou 510640, China
Guoping Ou: School of Electric Power Engineering, South China University of Technology, Guangzhou 510640, China
Zhenwei Zhou: Science and Technology on Reliability Physics and Application of Electronic Component Laboratory, The Fifth Electronics Research Institute of Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, Guangzhou 510610, China
Gang Wang: School of Electric Power Engineering, South China University of Technology, Guangzhou 510640, China
Pengfei Yu: Science and Technology on Reliability Physics and Application of Electronic Component Laboratory, The Fifth Electronics Research Institute of Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, Guangzhou 510610, China
Zheng Zhang: Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Electronic Information Products Reliability Technology, Guangzhou 510610, China

Energies, 2020, vol. 13, issue 18, 1-20

Abstract: With many advantages, modular multilevel convert (MMC) has been extensively used in high and medium voltage power transmission projects. The thermal performance and reliability of components in MMC are key issues in system operation. However, in the current research on the reliability of MMC components, there are few methods to improve service lifetime expectancy of the components. This paper proposes a balance control algorithm, based on the cumulative fatigue damage of components, feedback to the control terminal for allocating the sub-module (SM) operating state and generating trigger pulses. Finally, the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm is verified and discussed in case studies. It is found that this algorithm is able to improve the aging degree of components in the meanwhile, the improvement in MMC reliability comes at the cost of slightly increasing capacitor voltage fluctuations and total harmonic distortion (THD). Due to the limitation of capacitor thermal performance, SM capacitor banks become a weak link in MMC reliability.

Keywords: modular multilevel converter; cumulative fatigue damage; thermal stresses; reliability improvement; lifetime balancing control (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
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