Power Electronics for Renewable Energy Systems, Transportation and Industrial Applications

Chapter 18BReal-Time Simulation of Modular Multilevel Converters (MMCs)

Luc A. Grégoire¹, Jean Bélanger², Christian Dufour², Handy. F. Blanchette¹ and Kamal Al-Haddad¹

¹Electrical engineering department, Ecole de Technologie Supérieure, Montréal, Canada

²OPAL-RT TECHNOLOGIES INC, Montréal, Canada

18B.1 Introduction

Real-time simulation offers several advantages to speed up the development of new product. One of these advantages being the possibility to test and develop controllers when the hardware is not yet available. This is a serious advantage in the case of high-order multilevel converter, like modular multilevel converter (MMC) topology. Its physical size could raises serious issues for most laboratories, without even mentioning the cost to build such a complex structure. It can also be useful to analyze the interaction between several MMC and conventional high-voltage DC (HVDC) systems installed on the same power grid. Furthermore, it can perform factory acceptance test of the control system before the installation in the field. Nowadays, real-time simulators are often used simply to accelerate simulations, which could take several hours for simulation runs of a few seconds with a power grid having two or three converter stations using conventional single-processor simulation software. This chapter introduces bases of real-time simulation: its advantages and its constraints. Using these bases, real-time simulation of an MMC will be undertaken. This topology was first ...